STACK 
ANNEX 

PR 

4534 
R32 
1888 


UlNCEY 


STANDARD 
ENGLISH-CLASSICS 


V     J 


f 

f 


'  - 


REVOLT    OF    THE    TARTARS 


*CA*V& 


V 


(After  a  drawing  by  ARCHER.) 


••  In  addition  to  the  general  impression  of  his  diminutiveness  and 
fragility,  "lie  was  struck  with  the  peculiar  beauty  of  his  head  and 
forehead,  rising  disproportionately  high  over  his  small  wrinkly 
visage  anil  gentle  deep-set  eyes." 

i  >.\\  in  MASSON. 


DE  QUINCEY'S 


REVOLT  OF  THE  TARTARS 


EDITED 
WITH  INTRODUCTION  AND  NOTES 


WILLIAM  EDWARD  SIMONDS,  PH.D. 

PROFESSOR   OF   THE   ENGLISH    LANGUAGE    AND 
LITERATURE    IN    KNOX   COLLEGE 


BOSTON,  U.S.A. 

GINN    \-    COMPANY,    ITMLISHERS 
QTbe  aubcncttt 

1898 


('"I'VKIGHT,   1898,  BV 

WILLIAM    EDWARD   SIMONDS 

ALL    RIGHTS    RESERVED 


Annex 


PREFACE. 


IN  editing  an  English  classic  for  use  in  the  secondary 
schools,  there  is  always  opportunity  for  the  expression  of 
personal  convictions  and  personal  taste;  nevertheless,  where 
one  has  predecessors  in  the  task  of  preparing  such  a  text,  it 
is  difficult  always,  occasionally  impossible,  to  avoid  treading 
on  their  heels.  The  present  editor,  therefore,  hastens  to 
acknowledge  his  indebtedness  to  the  various  school  editions 
of  the  Revolt  of  the  Tartars,  already  in  existence.  The  notes 
by  Masson  are  so  authoritative  and  so  essential  that  their 
quotation  needs  no  comment.  De  Quincey's  footnotes  are 
retained  in  their  original  form  and  appear  embodied  in  the 
text.  The  other  annotations  suggest  the  method  which  the 
editor  would  follow  in  class-room  work  upon  this  essay. 

The  student's  attention  is  called  frequently  to  \\\&form  of 
expression;  the  discriminating  use  of  epithets,  the  employ- 
ment of  foreign  phrases,  the  allusions  to  Milton  and  the 
Bible,  the  structure  of  paragraphs,  the  treatment  of  incident, 
the  development  of  feeling,  the  impressiveness  of  a  present 
personality;  all  this,  however,  is  with  the  purpose,  not  of 
mechanic  exercise,  nor  merely  to  illustrate  "rhetoric,"  but 
to  illuminate  De  Quincey.  It  is  with  this  intention,  presum- 
ably, that  the  text  is  prescribed.  There  is  little  attractive- 
ness, after  all,  in  the  idea  of  a  style  so  colorless  and  so 
impersonal  that  the  individuality  of  its  victim  is  lost  in  its 
own  perfection;  this  was  certainly  not  the  Opium- Eater's  mind 
concerning  literary  form,  nor  does  it  appear  to  have  been  the 


2*  r»OCM  A 
1L*  Vri-O-  :    I 


iv  PREFACE. 

aim  of  any  of  our  masters.  Indeed,  it  may  be  well  in  passing 
to  point  out  to  pupils  how  fatal  to  success  in  writing  is  the 
attempt  to  imitate  the  style  of  any  man,  De  Quincey  included; 
it  is  always  in  order  to  emphasize  the  naturalness  and  spon- 
taneity of  the  "grand  style"  wherever  it  is  found.  The 
teacher  should  not  inculcate  a  blind  admiration  of  all  that 
De  Quincey  has  said  or  done ;  there  is  opportunity,  even  in 
this  brief  essay,  to  exercise  the  pupil  in  applying  the  common- 
place tests  of  criticism,  although  it  should  be  seen  to  as  well 
that  a  true  appreciation  is  awakened  for  the  real  excellences 
of  this  little  masterpiece. 


CONTENTS. 


INTRODUCTION  : 

CRITICAL   APPRECIATION vii 

BIOGRAPHICAL   SKETCH X 

AUTHORITIES   AND    REFERENCES xxii 

THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  TARTARS i 

APPENDED  NOTES  BY  MASSON 67 

NOTES,  EXPLANATORY  AND  CRITICAL    ....  74 


INTRODUCTION. 


THOMAS  DE  QUINCEY"  is  one  of  the  eccentric  figures  in 
English  literature.  Popularly  he  is  known  as  the  English 
Opium-Eater  and  as  the  subject  of  numerous  anecdotes 
which  emphasize  the  oddities  of  his  temperament  and  the 
unconventionality  of  his  habits.  That  this  man  of  distin- 
guished genius  was  the  victim  —  pitifully  the  victim  —  of 
opium  is  the  lamentable  fact;  that  he  was  morbidly  shy  and 
shunned  intercourse  with  all  except  a  few  intimate,  congenial 
friends;  that  he  was  comically  indifferent  to  the  fashion  of 
his  dress;  that  he  was  the  most  unpractical  and  childlike  of 
men;  that  he  was  often  betrayed,  because  of  these  peculiari- 
ties, into  many  ridiculous  embarrassments,  such  as  are 
described  by  Mr.  Findlay,  Mr.  Hogg,  and  Mr.  Burton,  —  of 
all  this  there  can  be  no  doubt;  but  these  idiosyncrasies  are, 
after  all,  of  minor  importance,  the  accidents,  not  the  essen- 
tials in  the  life  and  personality  of  this  remarkable  man.  The 
points  that  should  attract  our  notice,  the  qualities  that  really 
give  distinction  to  De  Quincey,  are  the  broad  sweep  of  his 
knowledge,  almost  unlimited  in  its  scope  and  singularly  accu- 
rate in  its  details,  a  facility  of  phrasing  and  a  word  supply 
that  transformed  the  mere  power  of  discriminating  expression 
into  a  fine  art,  and  a  style  that,  while  it  lapsed  occasionally 
from  the  standard  of  its  own  excellence,  was  generally  self- 
corrective  and  frequently  forsook  the  levels  of  commonplace 
excellence  for  the  highest  reaches  of  impassioned  prose. 
Nor  is  this  all.  His  pages  do  not  lack  in  humor  —  humor  of 
the  truest  and  most  delicate  type ;  and  if  De  Quincey  is  at 


viii  INTRODUCTION. 

times  impelled  beyond  the  bounds  of  taste,  even  these  excur- 
sions demonstrate  his  power,  at  least  in  handling  the  gro- 
tesque. His  sympathies,  however,  are  always  genuine,  and 
often  are  profound.  The  pages  of  his  autobiographic  essays 
reveal  the  strength  of  his  affections,  while  in  the  interpreta- 
tion of  such  a  character  as  that  of  Joan  of  Arc,  or  in  allusions 
like  those  to  the  pariahs,  —  defenceless  outcasts  from  society, 
by  whose  wretched  lot  his  heart  was  often  wrung,  —  he  writes 
in  truest  pathos. 

Now  sympathy  is  own  child  of  the  imagination,  whether 
expressed  in  the  language  of  laughter  or  in  the  vernacular  of 
tears;  and  the  most  distinctive  quality  in  the  mental  make-up 
of  De  Quincey  was,  after  all,  this  dominant  imagination  which 
was  characteristic  of  the  man  from  childhood  to  old  age. 
The  Opium- Eater  once  defined  the  great  scholar  as  "  not  one 
who  depends  simply  on  an  infinite  memory,  but  also  on  an 
infinite  and  electrical  power  of  combination,  bringing  together 
from  the  four  winds,  like  the  angel  of  the  resurrection,  what 
else  were  dust  from  dead  men's  bones,  into  the  unity  of 
breathing  life."  Such  was  De  Quincey  himself.  He  was  a 
scholar  born,  gifted  with  a  mind  apt  for  the  subtleties  of 
metaphysics,  a  memory  well-nigh  inexhaustible  in  the 
recovery  of  facts;  in  one  respect,  at  least,  he  was  a  great 
scholar,  for  his  mind  was  dominated  by  an  imagination  as 
vigorous  as  that  which  created  Macaulay's  England,  almost 
as  sensitive  to  dramatic  effect  as  that  which  painted  Carlyle's 
French  Revolution.  Therefore  when  he  wrote  narrative,  his- 
torical narrative,  or  reminiscence,  he  lived  in  the  experiences 
he  pictured,  as  great  historians  do ;  perhaps  living  over 
again  the  scenes  of  the  past,  or  for  the  first  time  making 
real  the  details  of  occurrences  with  which  he  was  only 
recently  familiar. 

The  Revolt  of  the  Tartars  is  a  good  illustration  of  his 
power.  Attracted  by  the  chance  reading  of  an  obscure 


INTRODUCTION.  IX 

French  missionary  and  traveller  to  the  dramatic  possibilities 
of  an  episode  in  Russian  history,  De  Quincey  built  from  the 
bare  notes  thus  discovered,  supplemented  by  others  drawn 
from  a  matter-of-fact  German  archaeologist,  a  narrative  which 
for  vividness  of  detail  and  truthfulness  of  local  color  belongs 
among  the  best  of  those  classics  in  which  fancy  helps  to 
illuminate  fact,  and  where  the  imagination  is  invoked  to 
recreate  what  one  feels  intuitively  must  have  been  real. 

The  Revolt  of  the  Tartars,  while  not  exhibiting  the  highest 
achievement  of  the  author's  power,  nevertheless  belongs  in 
the  group  of  writings  wherein  his  peculiar  excellences  are 
fairly  manifested.  The  obvious  quality  of  its  realism  has 
been  pointed  out  already;  the  masterly  use  of  the  prin- 
ciples of  suspense  and  stimulated  interest  will  hardly  pass 
unnoticed.  A  negative  excellence  is  the  absence  of  that 
discursiveness  in  composition,  that  tendency  to  digress  into 
superfluous  comment,  which  is  this  author's  one  prevailing 
fault.  De  Quincey  was  gifted  with  a  fine  appreciation  of 
harmonious  sound,  and  in  those  passages  where  his  spirit 
soars  highest  not  the  least  of  their  beauties  is  found  in  the 
melodiousness  of  their  tone  and  the  rhythmic  sweetness  of 
their  motion. 

It  is  as  a  master  of  rhetoric  that  De  Quincey  is  distin- 
guished among  writers.  Some  hints  of  his  ability  are  seen 
in  the  opening  and  closing  passages  of  this  essay,  but  to 
find  him  at  his  best  one  must  turn  to  the  Confessions  and  to 
the  other  papers  which  describe  his  life,  particularly  those 
which  recount  his  marvellous  dreams.  In  these  papers  we 
find  the  passages  where  De  Quincey's  passion  rises  to  the 
heights  which  few  other  writers  have  ever  reached  in  prose, 
a  loftiness  and  grandeur  which  is  technically  denominated 
as  "  sublime."  In  his  Essay  on  Style,  published  in  Black- 
wood's,  1840,  he  deprecates  the  usual  indifference  to  form,  on 
the  part  of  English  writers,  "  the  tendency  of  the  national 


X  INTRODUCTION. 

mind  to  value  the  matter  of  a  book  not  only  as  paramount 
to  the  manner,  but  even  as  distinct  from  it  and  as  capable 
of  a  separate  insulation."  As  one  of  the  great  masters  of 
prose  style  in  this  century,  De  Quincey  has  so  served  the 
interests  of  art  in  this  regard,  that  in  his  own  case  the 
charge  is  sometimes  reversed  :  his  own  works  are  read 
rather  to  observe  his  manner  than  to  absorb  his  thought. 
Yet  when  this  is  said,  it  is  not  to  imply  that  the  material  is 
unworthy  or  the  ideas  unsound ;  on  the  contrary,  his  senti- 
ment is  true  and  his  ideas  are  wholesome ;  but  many  of  the 
topics  treated  lie  outside  the  deeper  interests  of  ordinary 
life,  and  fail  to  appeal  to  us  so  practically  as  do  the  writings 
of  some  lesser  men.  Of  the  "  one  hundred  and  fifty  maga- 
zine articles  "  which  comprise  his  works,  there  are  many  that 
will  not  claim  the  general  interest,  yet  his  writings  as  a 
whole  will  always  be  recognized  by  students  of  rhetoric  as 
containing  excellences  which  place  their  author  among  the 
English  classics.  Nor  can  De  Quincey  be  accused  of  sub- 
ordinating matter  to  manner ;  in  spite  of  his  taste  for  the 
theatrical  and  a  tendency  to  extravagance,  his  expression  is 
in  keeping  with  his  thought,  and  the  material  of  those  pas- 
sages which  contain  his  most  splendid  flights  is  appropriate 
to  the  treatment  it  receives.  One  effective  reason,  certainly, 
why  we  take  pleasure  in  the  mere  style  of  De  Quincey's 
work  is  because  that  work  is  so  thoroughly  inspired  witli  the 
Opium-Eater's  own  genial  personality,  because  it  so  unmis- 
takably suggests  that  inevitable  "smack  of  individuality" 
which  gives  to  the  productions  of  all  great  authors  their 
truest  distinction  if  not  their  greatest  worth. 

Thomas  De  Quincey  was  born  in  Manchester,  August  15, 
1785.  His  father  was  a  well-to-do  merchant  of  literary  taste, 
but  of  him  the  children  of  the  household  scarcely  knew ;  he 
was  an  invalid,  a  prey  to  consumption,  and  during  their 


INTRODUCTION.  XI 

childhood  made  his  residence  mostly  in  the  milder  climate 
of  Lisbon  or  the  West  Indies.  Thomas  was  seven  years  old 
when  his  father  was  brought  home  to  die,  and  the  lad,  though 
sensitively  impressed  by  the  event,  felt  little  of  the  signifi- 
cance of  relationship  between  them.  Mrs.  De  Quincey  was 
a  somewhat  stately  lady,  rather  strict  in  discipline  and  rigid 
in  her  views.  There  does  not  seem  to  have  been  the  most 
complete  sympathy  between  mother  and  son,  yet  De  Quincey 
was  always  reverent  in  his  attitude,  and  certainly  entertained 
a  genuine  respect  for  her  intelligence  and  character.  There 
were  eight  children  in  the  home,  four  sons  and  four 
daughters ;  Thomas  was  the  fifth  in  age,  and  his  relations 
to  the  other  members  of  this  little  community  are  set  forth 
most  interestingly  in  the  opening  chapters  of  his  Autobio- 
graphic Sketches. 

De  Quincey's  child  life  was  spent  in  the  country ;  first  at 
a  pretty  rustic  dwelling  known  as  "The  Farm,"  and  after 
1792  at  a  larger  country  house  near  Manchester,  built  by 
his  father,  and  given  by  his  mother  the  pleasantly  suggestive 
name  of  "  Greenhay,"  hay  meaning  hedge,  or  hedgerow. 
The  early  boyhood  of  Thomas  De  Quincey  is  of  more  than 
ordinary  interest,  because  of  the  clear  light  it  throws  upon 
the  peculiar  temperament  and  endowments  of  the  man. 
Moreover,  we  have  the  best  of  authority  in  our  study  of  this 
period,  namely,  the  author  himself,  who  in  the  Sketches  already 
mentioned,  and  in  his  most  noted  work,  The  Confessions  of 
an  English  Opium-Eater^  has  told  the  story  of  these  early 
years  in  considerable  detail  and  with  apparent  sincerity. 
De  Quincey  was  not  a  sturdy  boy.  Shy  and  dreamy,  exqui- 
sitely sensitive  to  impressions  of  melancholy  and  mystery, 
he  was  endowed  with  an  imagination  abnormally  active 
even  for  a  child.  It  is  customary  to  give  prominence  to 
De  Quincey's  pernicious  habit  of  opium-eating,  in  attempt- 
ing to  explain  the  grotesque  fancies  and  weird  flights  of  his 


xii  INTRODUCTION. 

marvellous  mind  in  later  years  ;  yet  it  is  only  fair  to  empha- 
size the  fact  that  the  later  achievements  of  that  strange 
creative  faculty  were  clearly  foreshadowed  in  youth.  For 
example,  the  earliest  incident  in  his  life  that  he  could  after- 
wards recall,  he  describes  as  "  a  remarkable  dream  of  terrific 
grandeur  about  a  favorite  nurse,  which  is  interesting  to 
myself  for  this  reason  —  that  it  demonstrates  my  dreaming 
tendencies  to  have  been  constitutional,  and  not  dependent 
upon  laudanum."1  Again  he  tells  us  how,  when  six  years 
old,  upon  the  death  of  a  favorite  sister  three  years  older,  he 
stole  unobserved  upstairs  to  the  death  chamber  ;  unlocking 
the  door  and  entering  silently,  he  stood  for  a  moment  gazing 
through  the  open  window  toward  the  bright  sunlight  of  a 
cloudless  day,  then  turned  to  behold  the  angel  face  upon  the 
pillow.  Awed  in  the  presence  of  death,  the  meaning  of 
which  he  began  vaguely  to  understand,  he  stood  listening 
to  a  "  solemn  wind  "  that  began  to  blow  —  "  the  saddest 
that  ear  ever  heard."  What  followed  should  appear  in 
De  Quincey's  own  words :  "  A  vault  seemed  to  open  in  the 
zenith  of  the  far  blue  sky,  a  shaft  which  ran  up  forever.  I, 
in  spirit,  rose  as  if  on  billows  that  also  ran  up  the  shaft  for- 
ever ;  and  the  billows  seemed  to  pursue  the  throne  of  God  ; 
but  that  also  ran  on  before  us  and  fled  away  continually. 
The  flight  and  the  pursuit  seemed  to  go  on  forever  and  ever. 
Frost  gathering  frost,  some  sarsar  wind  of  death,  seemed  to 
repel  me ;  some  mighty  relation  between  God  and  death 
dimly  struggled  to  evolve  itself  from  the  dreadful  antagonism 
between  them  ;  shadowy  meanings  even  yet  continued  to 
exercise  and  torment,  in  dreams,  the  deciphering  oracle 
within  me.  I  slept  —  for  how  long  I  cannot  say:  slowly  I 
recovered  my  self-possession  ;  and,  when  I  woke,  found  my- 
self standing  as  before,  close  to  my  sister's  bed." 2  Some- 

1  Autobiographic  Sketches,  Chap.  I. 

2  Ibid. 


INTRODUCTION.  xill 

what  similar  in  effect  were  the  fancies  that  came  to  this 
dreamy  boy  on  Sunday  mornings  during  service  in  the  fine 
old  English  church.  Through  the  wide  central  field  of 
uncolored  glass,  set  in  a  rich  framework  of  gorgeous  color, 
—  for  the  side  panes  of  the  great  windows  were  pictured 
with  the  stories  of  saints  and  martyrs,  —  the  lad  saw  "  white 
fleecy  clouds  sailing  over  the  azure  depths  of  the  sky." 
Straightway  the  picture  changed  in  his  imagination,  and 
visions  of  young  children,  lying  on  white  beds  of  sickness 
and  of  death,  rose  before  his  eyes,  ascending  slowly  and 
softly  into  heaven,  God's  arms  descending  from  the  heavens 
that  He  might  the  sooner  take  them  to  Himself  and  grant 
release.  Such  are  not  infrequently  the  dreams  of  children. 
De  Quincey's  experience  is  not  unique ;  but  with  him  imagi- 
nation, the  imagination  of  childhood,  remained  unimpaired 
through  life.  It  was  not  wholly  opium  that  made  him  the 
great  dreamer  of  our  literature,  any  more  than  it  was  the 
effect  of  a  drug  that  brought  from  his  dying  lips  the  cry  of 
"  Sister,  sister,  sister  !  "  —  an  echo  from  this  sacred  chamber 
of  death,  where  he  had  stood  awed  and  entranced  nearly 
seventy  years  before. 

Not  all  of  De  Quincey's  boyhood,  however,  was  passed 
under  influences  so  serious  and  mystical  as  these.  He  was 
early  compelled  to  undergo  what  he  is  pleased  to  call  his 
"introduction  to  the  world  of  strife."  His  brother  William, 
five  years  the  senior  of  Thomas,  appears  to  have  been 
endowed  with  an  imagination  as  remarkable  as  his  own. 
"  His  genius  for  mischief,"  says  Thomas,  "  amounted  to 
inspiration."  Very  amusing  are  the  chronicles  of  the  little 
autocracy  thus  despotized  by  William.  The  assumption  of 
the  young  tyrant  was  magnificent.  Along  with  the  preroga- 
tives and  privileges  of  seniority,  he  took  upon  himself  as  well 
certain  responsibilities  more  galling  to  his  half-dozen  uneasy 
subordinates,  doubtless,  than  the  undisputed  hereditary  rights 


xiv  INTRODUCTION. 

of  age.  William  constituted  himself  the  educational  guide 
of  the  nursery,  proclaiming  theories,  delivering  lectures, 
performing  experiments,  asserting  opinions  upon  subjects 
diverse  and  erudite.  Indeed,  a  vigorous  spirit  was  housed 
in  William's  body,  and  but  for  his  early  death,  this  lad  also 
might  have  brought  lustre  to  the  family  name. 

A  real  introduction  to  the  world  of  strife  came  with  the 
development  of  a  lively  feud  between  the  two  brothers  on 
the  one  side,  and  on  the  other  a  crowd  of  young  belligerents 
employed  in  a  cotton  factory  on  the  road  between  Greenhay 
and  Manchester,  where  the  boys  now  attended  school. 
Active  hostilities  occurred  daily  when  the  two  "  aristocrats  " 
passed  the  factory  on  their  way  home  at  the  hour  when 
its  inmates  emerged  from  their  labor.  The  dread  of  this 
encounter  hung  like  a  cloud  over  Thomas,  yet  he  followed 
William  loyally,  and  served  with  all  the  spirit  of  a  cadet  of 
the  house.  Imagination  played  an  important  part  in  this 
campaign,  and  it  is  for  that  reason  primarily  that  to  this  and 
the  other  incidents  of  De  Quincey's  childhood  prominence 
is  here  given  ;  in  no  better  way  can  we  come  to  an  under- 
standing of  the  real  nature  of  this  singular  man. 

In  1796  the  home  at  Greenhay  was  broken  up.  The  irre- 
pressible William  was  sent  to  London  to  study  art;  Mrs. 
De  Quincey  removed  to  Bath,  and  Thomas  was  placed  in 
the  grammar  school  of  that  town;  a  younger  brother,  Richard, 
in  all  respects  a  pleasing  contrast  to  William,  was  a  sympa- 
thetic comrade  and  schoolmate.  For  two  years  De  Quincey 
remained  in  this  school,  achieving  a  great  reputation  in  the 
study  of  Latin,  and  living  a  congenial,  comfortable  life.  This 
was  followed  by  a  year  in  a  private  school  at  Winkfield, 
which  was  terminated  by  an  invitation  to  travel  in  Ireland 
with  young  Lord  Westport,  a  lad  of  De  Quincey's  own  age, 
an  intimacy  having  sprung  up  between  them  a  year  earlier 
at  I!;ith.  It  was  in  1800  that  the  trip  was  made,  and  the 


INTRODUCTION.  xv 

period  of  the  visit  extended  over  four  or  five  months.  After 
this  long  recess  De  Quincey  was  placed  in  the  grammar 
school  at  Manchester,  his  guardians  expecting  that  a  three 
years'  course  in  this  school  would  bring  him  a  scholarship  at 
Oxford.  However,  the  new  environment  proved  wholly 
uncongenial,  and  the  sensitive  boy  who,  in  spite  of  his 
shyness  and  his  slender  frame,  possessed  grit  in  abundance, 
and  who  was  through  life  more  or  less  a  law  to  himself,  made 
up  his  mind  to  run  away.  His  flight  was  significant.  Early 
on  a  July  morning  he  slipped  quietly  off  —  in  one  pocket  a 
copy  of  an  English  poet,  a  volume  of  Euripides  in  the  other. 
His  first  move  was  toward  Chester,  the  seventeen-year-old 
runaway  deeming  it  proper  that  he  should  report  at  once  to 
his  mother,  who  was  now  living  in  that  town.  So  he  trudged 
overland  forty  miles  and  faced  his  astonished  and  indignant 
parent.  At  the  suggestion  of  a  kind-hearted  uncle,  just  home 
from  India,  Thomas  was  let  off  easily;  indeed,  he  was  given 
an  allowance  of  a  guinea  a  week,  with  permission  to  go  on 
a  tramp  through  North  Wales,  a  proposition  which  he  hailed 
with  delight.  The  next  three  months  were  spent  in  a  rather 
pleasant  ramble,  although  the  weekly  allowance  was  scarcely 
sufficient  to  supply  all  the  comforts  desired.  The  trip  ended 
strangely.  Some  sudden  fancy  seizing  him,  the  boy  broke 
off  all  connection  with  his  friends  and  went  to  London. 
Unknown,  unprovided  for,  he  buried  himself  in  the  vast  life 
of  the  metropolis.  He  lived  a  precarious  existence  for 
several  months,  suffering  from  exposure,  reduced  to  the 
verge  of  starvation,  his  whereabouts  a  mystery  to  his  friends. 
The  cloud  of  this  experience  hung  darkly  over  his  spirit, 
even  in  later  manhood;  perceptions  of  a  true  world  of  strife 
were  vivid;  impressions  of  these  wretched  months  formed 
the  material  of  his  most  sombre  dreams. 

Rescued  at  last,  providentially,  De  Quincey  spent  the  next 
period  of  his  life,  covering  the  years  1803-7,  in  residence 


xvi  INTRODUCTION. 

at  Oxford.  His  career  as  a  student  at  the  university  is 
obscure.  He  was  a  member  of  Worcester  College,  was 
known  as  a  quiet,  studious  man,  and  lived  an  isolated  if  not 
•A  solitary  life.  With  a  German  student,  who  taught  him 
Hebrew,  De  Quincey  seems  to  have  had  some  intimacy,  but 
his  circle  of  acquaintance  was  small,  and  no  contemporary 
has  thrown  much  light  on  his  stay.  In  1807  he  disappeared 
from  Oxford,  having  taken  the  written  tests  for  his  degree,  but 
failing  to  present  himself  for  the  necessary  oral  examination. 

The  year  of  his  departure  from  Oxford  brought  to  De 
Quincey  a  long-coveted  pleasure  —  acquaintance  with  two 
famous  contemporaries  whom  he  greatly  admired,  Coleridge 
and  Wordsworth.  Characteristic  of  De  Quincey  in  many 
ways  was  his  gift,  anonymously  made,  of  .£300  to  his  hero, 
Coleridge.  This  was  in  1807,  when  De  Quincey  was  twenty- 
two,  and  was  master  of  his  inheritance.  The  acquaintance 
ripened  into  intimacy,  and  in  1809  the  young  man,  himself 
gifted  with  talents  which  were  to  make  him  equally  famous 
with  these,  took  up  his  residence  at  Grasmere,  in  the  Lake 
country,  occupying  for  many  years  the  cottage  which  Words- 
worth had  given  up  on  his  removal  to  ampler  quarters  at 
Rydal  Mount.  Here  he  spent  much  of  his  time  in  the 
society  of  the  men  who  were  then  grouped  in  distinguished 
neighborhood  ;  besides  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  the  poet 
Southey  was  accessible,  and  a  frequent  visitor  was  John 
Wilson,  later  widely  known  as  the  "Christopher  North"  of 
Blackwood  's  Magazine.  Nor  was  De  Quincey  idle ;  his  habits 
of  study  were  confirmed;  indeed,  he  was  already  a  philoso- 
pher at  twenty-four.  These  were  years  of  hard  reading  and 
industrious  thought,  wherein  he  accumulated  much  of  that 
metaphysical  wisdom  which  was  afterward  to  win  admiring 
recognition. 

In  1816  De  Quincey  married  Margaret  Simpson,  a  farmer's 
daughter  living  near.  There  is  a  pretty  scene  painted  by 


INTRODUCTION.  xvil 

the  author  himself,1  in  which  he  gives  us  a  glimpse  of  his 
domestic  life  at  this  time.  Therein  he  pictures  the  cottage, 
standing  in  a  valley,  eighteen  miles  from  any  town;  no  spa- 
cious valley,  but  about  two  miles  long  by  three-quarters  of  a 
mile  in  average  width.  The  mountains  are  real  mountains, 
between  3000  and  4000  feet  high,  and  the  cottage  a  real 
cottage,  white,  embowered  with  flowering  shrubs,  so  chosen 
as  to  unfold  a  succession  of  flowers  upon  the  walls,  and 
clustering  around  the  windows,  through  all  the  months  of 
spring,  summer,  and  autumn,  beginning,  in  fact,  with  May 
roses  and  ending  with  jasmine.  It  is  in  the  winter  season, 
however,  that  De  Quincey  paints  his  picture,  and  so  he 
describes  a  room,  seventeen  feet  by  twelve,  and  not  more 
than  seven  and  one-half  feet  high.  This  is  the  drawing-room, 
although  it  might  more  justly  be  termed  the  library,  for  it 
happens  that  books  are  the  one  form  of  property  in  which 
the  owner  is  wealthy.  Of  these  he  has  about  5000,  collected 
gradually  since  his  eighteenth  year.  The  room  is,  therefore, 
populous  with  books.  There  is  a  good  fire  on  the  hearth. 
The  furniture  is  plain  and  modest,  befitting  the  unpretending 
cottage  of  a  scholar.  Near  the  fire  stands  a  tea  table  ;  there 
are  only  two  cups  and  saucers  on  the  tray.  It  is  an  "eternal " 
teapot  that  the  artist  would  like  us  to  imagine,  for  he  usually 
drinks  tea  from  eight  o'clock  at  night  to  four  in  the  morning. 
There  is,  of  course,  a  companion  at  the  tea  table,  and  very 
lovingly  does  the  husband  suggest  the  pleasant  personality 
of  his  young  wife.  One  other  important  feature  is  included 
in  the  scene  ;  upon  the  table  there  rests  also  a  decanter,  in 
which  sparkles  the  ruby-colored  laudanum. 

De  Quincey's  experience  with  opium  had  begun  while  he 

was  a  student  at  the  university,  in  1804.     It  was  first  taken 

to  obtain  relief  from  neuralgia,  and  his  use  of  the  drug  did 

not  at  once  become  habitual.    During  the  period  of  residence 

1  Confessions  of  an  English  Opium-Eater,  Part  II. 


xvili  INTRODUCTION. 

at  Grasmere,  however,  De  Quincey  became  confirmed  in  the 
habit,  and  so  thoroughly  was  he  its  victim  that  for  a  season 
his  intellectual  powers  were  well-nigh  paralyzed ;  his  mind 
sank  under  such  a  cloud  of  depression  and  gloom  that  his 
condition  was  pitiful  in  the  extreme.  Just  before  his  mar- 
riage, in  1816,  De  Quincey,  by  a  vigorous  effort,  partially 
regained  his  self-control  and  succeeded  in  materially  reducing 
his  daily  allowance  of  the  drug;  but  in  the  following  year  he 
fell  more  deeply  than  ever  under  its  baneful  power,  until  in 
1818-19  his  consumption  of  opium  was  something  almost 
incredible.  Thus  he  became  truly  enough  the  great  English 
Opium-Eater,  whose  Confessions  were  later  to  fill  a  unique 
place  in  English  literature.  It  was  finally  the  absolute  need 
of  bettering  his  financial  condition  that  compelled  De  Quincey 
to  shake  off  the  shackles  of  his  vice ;  this  he  practically 
accomplished,  although  perhaps  he  was  never  entirely  free 
from  the  habit.  The  event  is  coincident  with  the  beginning 
of  his  career  as  a  public  writer.  In  1820  he  became  a  man 
of  letters. 

As  a  professional  writer  it  is  to  be  noted  that  De  Quincey 
was  throughout  a  contributor  to  the  periodicals.  With  one 
or  two  exceptions  all  his  works  found  their  way  to  the  public 
through  the  pages  of  the  magazines,  and  he  was  associated 
as  contributor  with  most  of  those  that  were  prominent  in  his 
time.  From  1821  to  1825  we  find  him  residing  for  the  most 
part  in  London,  and  here  his  public  career  began.  It  was 
De  Quincey's  most  distinctive  work  which  first  appeared. 
The  London  Magazine,  in  its  issue  for  September,  1821,  con- 
tained the  first  paper  of  the  Confessions  of  an  English  Of  i urn- 
Eater.  The  novelty  of  the  subject  was  sufficient  to  obtain 
for  the  new  writer  an  interested  hearing,  and  there  was  much 
discussion  as  to  whether  his  apparent  frankness  was  genuine 
or  assumed.  All  united  in  applause  of  the  masterly  style 
which  distinguished  the  essay,  also  of  the  profundity  and 


INTRODUCTION.  XIX 

value  of  the  interesting  material  it  contained.  A  second 
part  was  included  in  the  magazine  for  October.  Other 
articles  by  the  Opium-Eater  followed,  in  which  the  wide 
scholarship  of  the  author  was  abundantly  shown,  although 
the  topics  were  of  less  general  interest. 

In  1826  De  Quincey  became  an  occasional  contributor  to 
Blackwood's  Magazine,  and  this  connection  drew  him  to 
Edinburgh,  where  he  remained,  either  in  the  city  itself  or  in 
its  vicinity,  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  The  grotesquely  humor- 
ous Essay  on  Murder  Considered  as  One  of  the  Fine  Arts 
appeared  in  Blackwood's  in  1827.  In  1832  he  published  a 
series  of  articles  on  Roman  History,  entitled  The  Ccesars. 
It  was  in  July,  1837,  that  the  Revolt  of  the  Tartars  appeared; 
in  1840  his  critical  paper  upon  The  Essenes.  Meanwhile 
De  Quincey  had  begun  contributions  to  Tait's  Magazine, 
another  Edinburgh  publication,  and  it  was  in  that  periodical 
that  the  Sketches  of  Life  and  Manners  from  the  Autobiography 
of  an  English  Opium-Eater  began  to  appear  in  1834,  run- 
ning on  through  several  years.  These  sketches  include  the 
chapters  on  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  Lamb,  and  Southey 
as  well  as  those  Autobiographic  Sketches  which  form  such  a 
charming  and  illuminating  portion  of  his  complete  works. 

The  family  life  was  sadly  broken  in  1837  by  tne  death  of 
De  Quincey's  wife.  He  who  was  now  left  as  guardian  of 
the  little  household  of  six  children,  was  himself  so  helpless 
in  all  practical  matters  that  it  seemed  as  though  he  were  in 
their  childish  care  rather  than  protector  of  them.  Scores  of 
anecdotes  are  related  of  his  odd  and  unpractical  behavior. 
One  of  his  curious  habits  had  been  the  multiplication  of 
lodgings ;  as  books  and  manuscripts  accumulated  about  him 
so  that  there  remained  room  for  no  more,  he  would  turn  the 
key  upon  his  possessions  and  migrate  elsewhere  to  repeat 
the  performance  later  on.  It  is  known  that  as  many  as  four 
separate  rents  were  at  one  and  the  same  time  being  paid  by 


xx  INTRODUCTION. 

this  odd,  shy  little  man,  rather  than  allow  the  disturbance  or 
contraction  of  his  domain.  Sometimes  an  anxious  journey 
in  search  of  a  manuscript  had  to  be  made  by  author  and 
publisher  in  conjunction  before  the  missing  paper  could  be 
located.  The  home  life  of  this  eccentric  yet  lovable  man 
of  genius  seems  to  have  been  always  affectionate  and  tender 
in  spite  even  of  his  bondage  to  opium ;  it  was  especially 
beautiful  and  childlike  in  his  latest  years.  His  eldest 
daughter,  Margaret,  assumed  quietly  the  place  of  headship, 
and  with  a  discretion  equal  to  her  devotion  she  watched 
over  her  father's  welfare.  With  reference  to  De  Quincey's 
circumstances  at  this  time,  his  biographer,  Mr.  Masson, 
says :  "  Very  soon,  if  left  to  himself,  he  would  have  taken 
possession  of  every  room  in  the  house,  one  after  another, 
and  '  snowed  up '  each  with  his  papers ;  but,  that  having 
been  gently  prevented,  he  had  one  room  to  work  in  all  day 
and  all  night  to  his  heart's  content.  The  evenings,  or  the 
intervals  between  his  daily  working  time  and  his  nightly 
working  time,  or  stroll,  he  generally  spent  in  the  drawing- 
room  with  his  daughters,  either  alone  or  in  company  with 
any  friends  that  chanced  to  be  with  him.  At  such  times, 
we  are  told,  he  was  unusually  charming.  '  The  newspaper 
was  brought  out,  and  he,  telling  in  his  own  delightful  way, 
rather  than  reading,  the  news,  would,  on  questions  from  this 
one  or  that  one, of  the  party,  often  including  young  friends 
of  his  children,  neighbors,  or  visitors  from  distant  places, 
illuminate  the  subject  with  such  a  wealth  of  memories,  of 
old  stories  of  past  or  present  experiences,  of  humor,  of 
suggestion,  even  of  prophecy,  as  by  its  very  wealth  makes 
it  impossible  to  give  any  taste  of  it.'  The  description  is  by 
one  of  his  daughters  ;  and  she  adds  a  touch  which  is  inimi- 
table in  its  fidelity  and  tenderness.  '  He  was  not,'  she  says, 
'  a  reassuring  man  for  nervous  people  to  live  with,  as  those 
nights  were  exceptional  on  which  he  did  not  set  something 


INTRODUCTION.  xxi 

on  fire,  the  commonest  incident  being  for  some  one  to  look 
up  from  book  or  work,  to  say  casually,  Papa,  your  hair  is  on 
fire;  of  which  a  calm  Is  it,  my  love ?  and  a  hand  rubbing 
out  the  blaze  was  all  the  notice  taken.' " 1 

Of  his  personal  appearance  Professor  Minto  says  : 
"  He  was  a  slender  little  man,  with  small,  clearly  chiselled 
features,  a  large  head,  and  a  remarkably  high,  square  fore- 
head. There  was  a  peculiarly  high  and  regular  arch  in  the 
wrinkles  of  his  brow,  which  was  also  slightly  contracted. 
The  lines  of  his  countenance  fell  naturally  into  an  expres- 
sion of  mild  suffering,  of  endurance  sweetened  by  benevo- 
lence, or,  according  to  the  fancy  of  the  interpreter,  of  gentle, 
melancholy  sweetness.  All  that  met  him  seem  to  have  been 
struck  with  the  measured,  silvery,  yet  somewhat  hollow  and 
unearthly  tones  of  his  voice,  the  more  impressive  that  the 
flow  of  his  talk  was  unhesitating  and  unbroken." 

The  literary  labors  were  continuous.  In  1845  the  beauti- 
ful Suspiria  de  Profundis  (Sighs  from  the  Depths)  appeared 
in  Blackwood's ;  The  English  Mail  Coach  and  The  Vision  of 
Sudden  Death,  in  1849.  Among  other  papers  contributed 
to  Taifs  Magazine,  the  Joan  of  Arc  appeared  in  1847. 
During  the  last  ten  years  of  his  life,  De  Quincey  was 
occupied  chiefly  in  preparing  for  the  publishers  a  complete 
edition  of  his  works.  Ticknor  &  Fields,  of  Boston,  the 
most  distinguished  of  our  American  publishing  firms,  had 
put  forth,  1851-55,  the  first  edition  of  De  Quincey's  col- 
lected writings,  in  twenty  volumes.  The  first  British  edition 
was  undertaken  by  Mr.  James  Hogg,  of  Edinburgh,  in  1853, 
with  the  co-operation  of  the  author,  and  under  his  direction  ; 
the  final  volume  of  this  edition  was  not  issued  until  the  year 
following  De  Quincey's  death. 

In  the  autumn  of   1859   the  frail  physique  of  the  now 

1  De  Quincey  (English  Men  of  Letters),  David  Masson,  p.  no. 


xxii  INTRODUCTION. 

famous  Opium-Eater  grew  gradually  feeble,  although  suffer- 
ing from  no  definite  disease.  It  became  evident  that  his  life 
was  drawing  to  its  end.  On  December  8,  his  two  daughters 
standing  by  his  side,  he  fell  into  a  doze.  His  mind  had 
been  wandering  amid  the  scenes  of  his  childhood,  and  his 
last  utterance  was  the  cry,  "  Sister,  sister,  sister !  "  as  if  in 
recognition  of  one  awaiting  him,  one  who  had  been  often  in 
his  dreams,  the  beloved  Elizabeth,  whose  death  had  made 
so  profound  and  lasting  an  impression  on  his  imagination 
as  a  child. 

The  authoritative  edition  of  De  Quincey's  Works  is  that 
edited  by  David  Masson  and  published  in  fourteen  volumes 
by  Adam  and  Charles  Black  (Edinburgh).  For  American 
students  the  Riverside  Edition,  in  twelve  volumes  (Houghton, 
Mifflin  &  Co.,  Boston),  will  be  found  convenient.  The  most 
satisfactory  Life  of  De  Quincey  is  the  one  by  Masson  in  the 
English  Men  of  Letters  series.  Of  a  more  anecdotal  type 
are  the  Life  of  De  Quincey,  by  H.  A.  Page,  whose  real 
name  is  Alexander  H.  Japp  (2  vols.,  New  York,  1877),  and 
De  Quincey  Memorials  (New  York,  1891),  by  the  same 
author.  Very  interesting  is  the  brief  volume,  Recollections 
of  Thomas  De  Quincey,  by  John  R.  Findlay  (Edinburgh, 
1886),  who  also  contributes  the  paper  on  De  Quincey  to  the 
Encyclopedia  Britannica.  De  Quincey  and  his  Friends,  by 
James  Hogg  (London,  1895),  is  another  volume  of  recollec- 
tions, souvenirs,  and  anecdotes,  which  help  to  make  real 
their  subject's  personality.  Besides  the  editor,  other  writers 
contribute  to  this  volume :  Richard  Woodhouse,  John  R. 
Findlay,  and  John  Hill  Burton,  who  has  given  under  the 
name  "  Papaverius,"  a  picturesque  description  of  the 
Opium-Eater.  The  student  should  always  remember  that 
De  Quincey's  own  chapters  in  the  Autobiographic  Sketches, 
and  the  Confessions  of  an  English  Opium-Eater,  which  are 


INTRODUCTION.  xxill 

among  the  most  charming  and  important  of  his  writings,  are 
also  the  most  authoritative  and  most  valuable  sources  of  our 
information  concerning  him.  In  reading  about  De  Quincey, 
do  not  fail  to  read  De  Quincey  himself. 

The  best  criticism  of  the  Opium-Eater's  work  is  found  in 
William  Minto's  Manual  of  English  Prose  Literature  (Ginn 
&  Co.).  A  shorter  essay  is  contained  in  Saintsbury's 
History  of  Nineteenth  Century  Literature.  A  very  valuable 
list  of  all  De  Quincey's  writings,  in  chronological  order,  is 
given  by  Fred  N.  Scott,  in  his  edition  of  De  Quincey's 
essays  on  Style,  Rhetoric,  and  Language  (Allyn  &  Bacon). 
Numerous  magazine  articles  may  be  found  by  referring  to 
Poole's  Index. 


HOW  TO    READ    DE    QUINCEY. 


"  DE  QUINCEY'S  sixteen  volumes  of  magazine  articles 
are  full  of  brain  from  beginning  to  end.  At  the  rate  of 
about  half  a  volume  a  day,  they  would  serve  for  a  month's 
reading,  and  a  month  continuously  might  be  worse  ex- 
pended. There  are  few  courses  of  reading  from  which  a 
young  man  of  good  natural  intelligence  would  come  away 
more  instructed,  charmed,  and  stimulated,  or,  to  express 
the  matter  as  definitely  as  possible,  with  his  mind  more 
stretched.  Good  natural  intelligence,  a  certain  fineness  of 
fibre,  and  some  amount  of  scholarly  education,  have  to 
be  presupposed,  indeed,  in  all  readers  of  De  Quincey. 
But,  even  for  the  fittest  readers,  a  month's  complete  and 
continuous  course  of  De  Quincey  would  be  too  much. 
Better  have  him  on  the  shelf,  and  take  down  a  volume 
at  intervals  for  one  or  two  of  the  articles  to  which  there 
may  be  an  immediate  attraction.  An  evening  with  De 
Quincey  in  this  manner  will  always  be  profitable." 

DAVID  MASSON,  Life  of  De  Quincey,  Chap.  XI. 


REVOLT    OF    THE    TARTARS; 

OR,   FLIGHT   OF   THE   KALMUCK   KHAN    AND    HIS    PEOPLE 

FROM   THE   RUSSIAN    TERRITORIES    TO   THE 

FRONTIERS    OF  CHINA. 


THERE  is  no  great  event  in  modern  history,  or,  perhaps 
it  may  be  said  more  broadly,  none  in  all  history,  from  its 
earliest  records,  less  generally  known,  or  more  striking  to 
the  imagination,  than  the  flight  eastwards  of  a  principal 
Tartar  nation  across  the  boundless  steppes  of  Asia  in  the  5 
latter  half  of  the  last  century.  The  terminus  a  quo  of  this 
flight  and  the  terminus  ad  quern  are  equally  magnificent 
—  the  mightiest  of  Christian  thrones  being  the  one,  the 
mightiest  of  pagan  the  other ;  and  the  grandeur  of  these 
two  terminal  objects  is  harmoniously  supported  by  the  10 
romantic  circumstances  of  the  flight.  In  the  abruptness 
of  its  commencement  and  the  fierce  velocity  of  its  execu- 
tion we  read  an  expression  of  the  wild,  barbaric  character 
of  the  agents.  In  the  unity  of  purpose  connecting  this 
myriad  of  wills,  and  in  the  blind  but  unerring  aim  at  a  15 
mark  so  remote,  there  is  something  which  recalls  to  the 
mind  those  almighty  instincts  that  propel  the  migrations  of 
the  swallow  and  the  leeming  or  the  life-withering  marches 
of  the  locust.  Then,  again,  in  the  gloomy  vengeance  of 
Russia  and  her  vast  artillery,  which  hung  upon  the  rear  20 
and  the  skirts  of  the  fugitive  vassals,  we  are  reminded  of 
Miltonic  images  —  such,  for  instance,  as  that  of  the  soli- 
tary hand  pursuing  through  desert  spaces  and  through 


2  REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS. 

ancient  chaos  a  rebellious  host,  and  overtaking  with  vol- 
leying thunders  those  who  believed  themselves  already 
within  the  security  of  darkness  and  of  distance. 

I  shall  have  occasion,  farther  on,  to  compare  this  event 
5  with  other  great  national  catastrophes  as  to  the  magnitude 
of  the  suffering.  But  it  may  also  challenge  a  comparison 
with  similar  events  under  another  relation,  —  viz.  as  to  its 
dramatic  capabilities.  Few  cases,  perhaps,  in  romance 
or  history,  can  sustain  a  close  collation  with  this  as  to  the 

10  complexity  of  its  separate  interests.  The  great  outline  of 
the  enterprise,  taken  in  connection  with  the  operative 
motives,  hidden  or  avowed,  and  the  religious  sanctions 
under  which  it  was  pursued,  give  to  the  case  a  triple 
character :  i  st,  That  of  a  conspiracy,  with  as  close  a  unity 

15  in  the  incidents,  and  as  much  of  a  personal  interest  in 
the  moving  characters,  with  fine  dramatic  contrasts,  as 
belongs  to  "Venice  Preserved"  or  to  the  "Fiesco"of 
Schiller.  2dly,  That  of  a  great  military  expedition  offer- 
ing the  same  romantic  features  of  vast  distances  to  be 

20  traversed,  vast  reverses  to  be  sustained,  untried  routes, 
enemies  obscurely  ascertained,  and  hardships  too  vaguely 
prefigured,  which  mark  the  Egyptian  expedition  of  Cam- 
byses  —  the  anabasis  of  the  younger  Cyrus,  and  the 
subsequent  retreat  of  the  ten  thousand,  the  Parthian 

25  expeditions  of  the  Romans,  especially  those  of  Crassus 
and  Julian  —  or  (as  more  disastrous  than  any  of  them, 
and,  in  point  of  space,  as  well  as  in  amount  of  forces, 
more  extensive)  the  Russian  anabasis  and  katabasis  of 
Napoleon.  3dly,  That  of  a  religious  Exodus,  authorized 

30  by  an  oracle  venerated  throughout  many  nations  of  Asia, 
—  an  Exodus,  therefore,  in  so  far  resembling  the  great 
Scriptural  Exodus  of  the  Israelites,  under  Moses  and 
Joshua,  as  well  as  in  the  very  peculiar  distinction  of  carry- 
ing along  with  them  their  entire  families,  women,  children, 


REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS.  3 

slaves,  their  herd  of  cattle  and  of  sheep,  their  horses  and 
their  camels. 

This  triple  character  of  the  enterprise  naturally  invests 
it  with  a  more  comprehensive  interest ;  but  the  dramatic 
interest  which  we  ascribed  to  it,  or  its  fitness  for  a  stage    5 
representation,  depends  partly  upon  the  marked  variety 
and  the  strength  of  the  personal  agencies  concerned,  and 
partly  upon  the  succession  of  scenical  situations.     Even 
the  steppes,  the  camels,  the  tents,  the  snowy  and  the  sandy 
deserts  are  not  beyond  the  scale  of  our  modern  represent-  10 
ative  powers,  as  often  called  into  action  in  the  theatres 
both  of  Paris  and  London  ;  and  the  series  of  situations 
unfolded,  —  beginning  with  the  general  conflagration  on 
the  Wolga  —  passing  thence  to  the  disastrous  scenes  of 
the  flight    (as  it  literally  was  in  its  commencement) —  15 
to  the  Tartar  siege  of  the  Russian  fortress  Koulagina  — 
the  bloody  engagement  with  the  Cossacks  in  the  mountain 
passes  at  Ouchim  —  the  surprisal  by  the   Bashkirs  and 
the  advanced  posts  of  the  Russian  army  at  Torgau  —  the 
private  conspiracy  at  this  point  against  the  Khan  —  the  20 
long  succession  of  running  fights  — the  parting  massacres 
at  the  Lake  of  Tengis  under  the  eyes  of  the  Chinese  — 
and,  finally,  the  tragical  retribution  to  Zebek-Dorchi  at 
the  hunting  lodge  of  the  Chinese  Emperor;  —  all  these 
situations  communicate   a  scenical  animation  to  the  wild  25 
romance,  if  treated  dramatically;  whilst  a  higher  and  a 
philosophic  interest  belongs  to  it  as  a  case  of  authentic 
history,  commemorating  a  great  revolution,  for  good  and 
for  evil,  in  the  fortunes  of  a  whole  people  —  a  people  semi- 
barbarous,  but  simple-hearted,  and  of  ancient  descent.        30 

On  the  2istof  January,  1761,  the  young  Prince  Oubacha 
assumed  the  sceptre  of  the  Kalmucks  upon  the  death 
of  his  father.  Some  part  of  the  power  attached  to  this 


4  REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS. 

dignity  he  had  already  wielded  since  his  fourteenth  year, 
in  quality  of  Vice-Khan,  by  the  express  appointment  and 
with  the  avowed  support  of  the  Russian  Government. 
He  was  now  about  eighteen  years  of  age,  amiable  in  his 
5  personal  character,  and  not  without  titles  to  respect  in  his 
public  character  as  a  sovereign  prince.  In  times  more 
peaceable,  and  amongst  a  people  more  entirely  civilized 
or  more  humanized  by  religion,  it  is  even  probable  that 
he  might  have  discharged  his  high  duties  with  consider- 

10  able  distinction ;  but  his  lot  was  thrown  upon  stormy 
times,  and  a  most  difficult  crisis  amongst  tribes  whose 
native  ferocity  was  exasperated  by  debasing  forms  of 
superstition,  and  by  a  nationality  as  well  as  an  inflated 
conceit  of  their  own  merit  absolutely  unparalleled  ;  whilst 

15  the  circumstances  of  their  hard  and  trying  position  under 
the  jealous  surveillance  of  an  irresistible  lord  paramount, 
in  the  person  of  the  Russian  Czar,  gave  a  fiercer  edge  to 
the  natural  unamiableness  of  the  Kalmuck  disposition,  and 
irritated  its  gloomier  qualities  into  action  under  the  rest- 

20  less  impulses  of  suspicion  and  permanent  distrust.  No 
prince  could  hope  for  a  cordial  allegiance  from  his  sub- 
jects or  a  peaceful  reign  under  the  circumstances  of  the 
case  ;  for  the  dilemma  in  which  a  Kalmuck  ruler  stood 
at  present  was  of  this  nature :  wanting  the  support  and 

25  sanction  of  the  Czar,  he  was  inevitably  too  weak  from 
without  to  command  confidence  from  his  subjects  or 
resistance  to  his  competitors.  On  the  other  hand,  with 
this  kind  of  support,  and  deriving  his  title  in  any  degree 
from  the  favor  of  the  Imperial  Court,  he  became  almost 

30  in  that  extent  an  object  of  hatred  at  home  and  within  the 
whole  compass  of  his  own  territory.  He  was  at  once  an 
object  of  hatred  for  the  past,  being  a  living  monument  of 
national  independence  ignominiously  surrendered  ;  and  an 
object  of  jealousy  for  the  future,  as  one  who  had  already 


REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS.  5 

advertised  himself  to  be  a  fitting  tool  for  the  ultimate 
purposes  (whatsoever  those  might  prove  to  be)  of  the 
Russian  Court.  Coming  himself  to  the  Kalmuck  sceptre 
under  the  heaviest  weight  of  prejudice  from  the  unfor- 
tunate circumstances  of  his  position,  it  might  have  been  5 
expected  that  Oubacha  would  have  been  pre-eminently 
an  object  of  detestation ;  for,  besides  his  known  depend- 
ence upon  the  Cabinet  of  St.  Petersburg,  the  direct  line 
of  succession  had  been  set  aside,  and  the  principle  of 
inheritance  violently  suspended,  in  favor  of  his  own  10 
father,  so  recently  as  nineteen  years  before  the  era  of  his 
own  accession,  consequently  within  the  lively  remem- 
brance of  the  existing  generation.  He,  therefore,  almost 
equally  with  his  father,  stood  within  the  full  current  of 
the  national  prejudices,  and  might  have  anticipated  the  15 
most  pointed  hostility.  But  it  was  not  so  :  such  are  the 
caprices  in  human  affairs  that  he  was  even,  in  a  moderate 
sense,  popular  —  a  benefit  which  wore  the  more  cheering 
aspect  and  the  promises  of  permanence,  inasmuch  as  he 
owed  it  exclusively  to  his  personal  qualities  of  kindness  20 
and  affability,  as  well  as  to  the  beneficence  of  his  govern- 
ment. On  the  other  hand,  to  balance  this  unlooked-for 
prosperity  at  the  outset  of  his  reign,  he  met  with  a  rival 
in  popular  favor  —  almost  a  competitor  —  in  the  person  of 
Zebek-Dorchi,  a  prince  with  considerable  pretensions  to  25 
the  throne,  and,  perhaps  it  might  be  said,  with  equal  pre- 
tensions. Zebek-Dorchi  was  a  direct  descendant  of  the 
same  royal  house  as  himself,  through  a  different  branch. 
On  public  grounds,  his  claim  stood,  perhaps,  on  a  footing 
equally  good  with  that  of  Oubacha,  whilst  his  personal  3° 
qualities,  even  in  those  aspects  which  seemed  to  a  philo- 
sophical observer  most  odious  and  repulsive,  promised 
the  most  effectual  aid  to  the  dark  purposes  of  an  intriguer 
or  a  conspirator,  and  were  generally  fitted  to  win  a  popular 


6  REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS. 

support  precisely  in  those  points  where  Oubacha  was 
most  defective.  He  was  much  superior  in  external  ap- 
pearance to  his  rival  on  the  throne,  and  so  far  better 
qualified  to  win  the  good  opinion  of  a  semi-barbarous 
5  people  ;  whilst  his  dark  intellectual  qualities  of  Machiavel- 
ian  dissimulation,  profound  hypocrisy,  and  perfidy  which 
knew  no  touch  of  remorse,  were  admirably  calculated  to 
sustain  any  ground  which  he  might  win  from  the  simple- 
hearted  people  with  whom  he  had  to  deal  and  from  the 

10  frank  carelessness  of  his  unconscious  competitor. 

At  the  very  outset  of  his  treacherous  career,  Zebek- 
Dorchi  was  sagacious  enough  to  perceive  that  nothing 
could  be  gained  by  open  declaration  of  hostility  to  the 
reigning  prince  :  the  choice  had  been  a  deliberate  act  on 

15  the  part  of  Russia,  and  Elizabeth  Petrowna  was  not  the 
person  to  recall  her  own  favors  with  levity  or  upon  slight 
grounds.  Openly,  therefore,  to  have  declared  his  enmity 
toward  his  relative  on  the  throne,  could  have  had  no  effect 
but  that  of  arming  suspicions  against  his  own  ulterior 

20  purposes  in  a  quarter  where  it  was  most  essential  to  his 
interest  that,  for  the  present,  all  suspicions  should  be 
hoodwinked.  Accordingly,  after  much  meditation,  the 
course  he  took  for  opening  his  snares  was  this:  —  He 
raised  a  rumor  that  his  own  life  was  in  danger  from  the 

25  plots  of  several  Saissang  (that  is,  Kalmuck  nobles),  who 
were  leagued  together  under  an  oath  to  assassinate  him  ; 
and  immediately  after,  assuming  a  well-counterfeited 
alarm,  he  fled  to  Tcherkask,  followed  by  sixty-five  tents. 
From  this  place  he  kept  up  a  correspondence  with  the 

30  Imperial  Court,  and,  by  way  of  soliciting  his  cause  more 
effectually,  he  soon  repaired  in  person  to  St.  Petersburg. 
Once  admitted  to  personal  conferences  with  the  cabinet, 
he  found  no  difficulty  in  winning  over  the  Russian  coun- 
cils to  a  concurrence  with  some  of  his  political  views, 


REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS.  7 

and  thus  covertly  introducing  the  point  of  that  wedge 
which  was  finally  to  accomplish  his  purposes.  In  partic- 
ular, he  persuaded  the  Russian  Government  to  make  a 
very  important  alteration  in  the  constitution  of  the  Kal- 
muck State  Council  which  in  effect  reorganized  the  whole  5 
political  condition  of  the  state  and  disturbed  the  balance 
of  power  as  previously  adjusted.  Of  this  council  —  in 
the  Kalmuck  language  called  Sarga  —  there  were  eight 
members,  called  Sargatchi ;  and  hitherto  it  had  been  the 
custom  that  these  eight  members  should  be  entirely  sub-  10 
ordinate  to  the  Khan  ;  holding,  in  fact,  the  ministerial 
character  of  secretaries  and  assistants,  but  in  no  respect 
ranking  as  co-ordinate  authorities.  That  had  produced 
some  inconveniences  in  former  reigns ;  and  it  was  easy 
for  Zebek-Dorchi  to  point  the  jealousy  of  the  Russian  15 
Court  to  others  more  serious  which  might  arise  in  future 
circumstances  of  war  or  other  contingencies.  It  was 
resolved,  therefore,  to  place  the  Sargatchi  henceforward 
on  a  footing  of  perfect  independence,  and,  therefore  (as 
regarded  responsibility),  on  a  footing  of  equality  with  the  20 
Khan.  Their  independence,  however,  had  respect  only 
to  their  own  sovereign ;  for  toward  Russia  they  were 
placed  in  a  new  attitude  of  direct  duty  and  accountability 
by  the  creation  in  their  favor  of  small  pensions  (300 
roubles  a  year),  which,  however,  to  a  Kalmuck  of  that  25 
day  were  more  considerable  than  might  be  supposed, 
and  had  a  further  value  as  marks  of  honorary  distinction 
emanating  from  a  great  empress.  Thus  far  the  purposes 
of  Zebek-Dorchi  were  served  effectually  for  the  moment  : 
but,  apparently,  it  was  only  for  the  moment;  since,  in  30 
the  further  development  of  his  plots,  this  very  depend- 
ency upon  Russian  influence  would  be  the  most  serious 
obstacle  in  his  way.  There  was,  however,  another  point 
carried,  which  outweighed  all  inferior  considerations,  as 


8  REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS. 

it  gave  him  a  power  of  setting  aside  discretionally  what- 
soever should  arise  to  disturb  his  plots :  he  was  himself 
appointed  President  and  Controller  of  the  Sargatchi. 
The  Russian  Court  had  been  aware  of  his  high  preten- 
5  sions  by  birth,  and  hoped  by  this  promotion  to  satisfy 
the  ambition  which,  in  some  degree,  was  acknowledged 
to  be  a  reasonable  passion  for  any  man  occupying  his 
situation. 

Having  thus  completely  blindfolded   the   Cabinet  of 

10  Russia,  Zebek-Dorchi  proceeded  in  his  new  character  to 
fulfil  his  political  mission  with  the  Khan  of  the  Kalmucks. 
So  artfully  did  he  prepare  the  road  for  his  favorable 
reception  at  the  court  of  this  prince  that  he  was  at  once 
and  universally  welcomed  as  a  public  benefactor.  The 

15  pensions  of  the  councillors  were  so  much  additional  wealth 
poured  into  the  Tartar  exchequer  ;  as  to  the  ties  of  depend- 
ency thus  created,  experience  had  not  yet  enlightened 
these  simple  tribes  as  to  that  result.  And  that  he  himself 
should  be  the  chief  of  these  mercenary  councillors  was  so 

20  far  from  being  charged  upon  Zebek  as  any  offence  or  any 
ground  of  suspicion,  that  his  relative  the  Khan  returned 
him  hearty  thanks  for  his  services,  under  the  belief  that 
he  could  have  accepted  this  appointment  only  with  a  view 
to  keep  out  other  and  more  unwelcome  pretenders,  who 

25  would  not  have  had  the  same  motives  of  consanguinity  or 
friendship  for  executing  its  duties  in  a  spirit  of  kindness 
to  the  Kalmucks.  The  first  use  which  he  made  of  his 
new  functions  about  the  Khan's  person  was  to  attack  the 
Court  of  Russia,  by  a  romantic  villainy  not  easily  to  be 

30  credited,  for  those  very  acts  of  interference  with  the 
council  which  he  himself  had  prompted.  This  was  a 
dangerous  step :  but  it  was  indispensable  to  his  farther 
advance  upon  the  gloomy  path  which  he  had  traced  out 
for  himself.  A  triple  vengeance  was  what  he  meditated : 


REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS.  9 

i,  upon  the  Russian  Cabinet,  for  having  undervalued  his 
own  pretensions  to  the  throne  ;  2,  upon  his  amiable  rival, 
for  having  supplanted  him  ;  and  3,  upon  all  those  of  the 
nobility  who  had  manifested  their  sense  of  his  weakness 
by  their  neglect  or  their  sense  of  his  perfidious  character  5 
by  their  suspicions.  Here  was  a  colossal  outline  of  wick- 
edness ;  and  by  one  in  his  situation,  feeble  (as  it  might 
seem)  for  the  accomplishment  of  its  humblest  parts,  how 
was  the  total  edifice  to  be  reared  in  its  comprehensive 
grandeur  ?  He,  a  worm  as  he  was,  could  he  venture  to  10 
assail  the  mighty  behemoth  of  Muscovy,  the  potentate 
who  counted  three  hundred  languages  around  the  foot- 
steps of  his  throne,  and  from  whose  "  lion  ramp  "  recoiled 
alike  "  baptized  and  infidel  "  —  Christendom  on  the  one 
side,  strong  by  her  intellect  and  her  organization,  and  the  15 
"  barbaric  East "  on  the  other,  with  her  unnumbered 
numbers  ?  The  match  was  a  monstrous  one  ;  but  in  its 
very  monstrosity  there  lay  this  germ  of  encouragement  — 
that  it  could  not  be  suspected.  The  very  hopelessness 
of  the  scheme  grounded  his  hope  ;  and  he  resolved  to  20 
execute  a  vengeance  which  should  involve  as  it  were,  in 
the  unity  of  a  well-laid  tragic  fable,  all  whom  he  judged 
to  be  his  enemies.  That  vengeance  lay  in  detaching  from 
the  Russian  empire  the  whole  Kalmuck  nation  and  break- 
ing up  that  system  of  intercourse  which  had  thus  far  been  25 
beneficial  to  both.  This  last  was  a  consideration  which 
moved  him  but  little.  True  it  was  that  Russia  to  the 
Kalmucks  had  secured  lands  and  extensive  pasturage ; 
true  it  was  that  the  Kalmucks  reciprocally  to  Russia  had 
furnished  a  powerful  cavalry  ;  but  the  latter  loss  would  be  30 
part  of  his  triumph,  and  the  former  might  be  more  than 
compensated  in  other  climates,  under  other  sovereigns. 
Here  was  a  scheme  which,  in  its  final  accomplishment, 
would  avenge  him  bitterly  on  the  Czarina,  and  in  the 


10  REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS. 

course  of  its  accomplishment  might  furnish  him  with 
ample  occasions  for  removing  his  other  enemies.  It  may 
be  readily  supposed,  indeed,  that  he  who  could  deliber- 
ately raise  his  eyes  to  the  Russian  autocrat  as  an  antago- 

5  nist  in  single  duel  with  himself  was  not  likely  to  feel  much 
anxiety  about  Kalmuck  enemies  of  whatever  rank.  He 
took  his  resolution,  therefore,  sternly  and  irrevocably,  to 
effect  this  astonishing  translation  of  an  ancient  people 
across  the  pathless  deserts  of  Central  Asia,  intersected 

10  continually  by  rapid  rivers  rarely  furnished  with  bridges, 
and  of  which  the  fords  were  known  only  to  those  who 
might  think  it  for  their  interest  to  conceal  them,  through 
many  nations  inhospitable  or  hostile  :  frost  and  snow 
around  them  (from  the  necessity  of  commencing  their 

15  flight  in  winter),  famine  in  their  front,  and  the  sabre,  or 
even  the  artillery  of  an  offended  and  mighty  empress 
hanging  upon  their  rear  for  thousands  of  miles.  But  what 
was  to  be  their  final  mark  —  the  port  of  shelter  after  so 
fearful  a  course  of  wandering  ?  Two  things  were  evident  : 

20  it  must  be  some  power  at  a  great  distance  from  Russia, 
so  as  to  make  return  even  in  that  view  hopeless,  and  it 
must  be  a  power  of  sufficient  rank  to  insure  them  protec- 
tion from  any  hostile  efforts  on  the  part  of  the  Czarina 
for  reclaiming  them  or  for  chastising  their  revolt.  Both 

25  conditions  were  united  obviously  in  the  person  of  Kien 
Long,  the  reigning  Emperor  of  China,  who  was  further 
recommended  to  them  by  his  respect  for  the  head  of 
their  religion.  To  China,  therefore,  and,  as  their  first 
rendezvous,  to  the  shadow  of  the  Great  Chinese  Wall,  it 

30  was  settled  by  Zebek  that  they  should  direct  their  flight. 
Next  came  the  question  of  time  —  when  should  the 
flight  commence  ?  and,  finally,  the  more  delicate  question 
as  to  the  choice  of  accomplices.  To  extend  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  conspiracy  too  far  was  to  insure  its  betrayal 


REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS.  11 

to  the  Russian  Government.  Yet,  at  some  stage  of  the 
preparations,  it  was  evident  that  a  very  extensive  confi- 
dence must  be  made,  because  in  no  other  way  could  the 
mass  of  the  Kalmuck  population  be  persuaded  to  furnish 
their  families  with  the  requisite  equipments  for  so  long  a  5 
migration.  This  critical  step,  however,  it  was  resolved 
to  defer  up  to  the  latest  possible  moment,  and,  at  all 
events,  to  make  no  general  communication  on  the  sub- 
ject until  the  time  of  departure  should  be  definitely 
settled.  In  the  meantime,  Zebek  admitted  only  three  10 
persons  to  his  confidence ;  of  whom  Oubacha,  the  reign- 
ing prince,  was  almost  necessarily  one  ;  but  him,  for  his 
yielding  and  somewhat  feeble  character,  he  viewed  rather 
in  the  light  of  a  tool  than  as  one  of  his  active  accom- 
plices. Those  whom  (if  anybody)  he  admitted  to  an  un-  15 
reserved  participation  in  his  counsels  were  two  only  :  the 
great  Lama  among  the  Kalmucks,  and  his  own  father-in- 
law,  Erempel,  a  ruling  prince  of  some  tribe  in  the  neigh- 
borhood of  the  Caspian  Sea,  recommended  to  his  favor 
not  so  much  by  any  strength  of  talent  corresponding  to  20 
the  occasion  as  by  his  blind  devotion  to  himself  and 
his  passionate  anxiety  to  promote  the  elevation  of  his 
daughter  and  his  son-in-law  to  the  throne  of  a  sovereign 
prince.  A  titular  prince  Zebek  already  was  :  but  this 
dignity,  without  the  substantial  accompaniment,  of  a  seep-  25 
tre,  seemed  but  an  empty  sound  to  both  of  these  ambi- 
tious rebels.  The  other  accomplice,  whose  name  was 
Loosang-Dchaltzan,  and  whose  rank  was  that  of  Lama, 
or  Kalmuck  pontiff,  was  a  person  of  far  more  distin- 
guished pretensions  ;  he  had  something  of  the  same  30 
gloomy  and  terrific  pride  which  marked  the  character  of 
Zebek  himself,  manifesting  also  the  same  energy,  accom- 
panied by  the  same  unfaltering  cruelty,  and  a  natural 
facility  of  dissimulation  even  more  profound.  It  was  by 


12  REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS. 

this  man  that  the  other  question  was  settled  as  to  the 
time  for  giving  effect  to  their  designs.  His  own  pontifi- 
cal character  had  suggested  to  him  that,  in  order  to 
strengthen  their  influence  with  the  vast  mob  of  simple- 

5  minded  men  whom  they  were  to  lead  into  a  howling 
wilderness,  after  persuading  them  to  lay  desolate  their 
own  ancient  hearths,  it  was  indispensable  that  they  should 
be  able,  in  cases  of  extremity,  to  plead  the  express  sanc- 
tion of  God  for  their  entire  enterprise.  This  could  only 

10  be  done  by  addressing  themselves  to  the  great  head  of 
their  religion,  the  Dalai-Lama  of  Tibet.  Him  they  easily 
persuaded  to  countenance  their  schemes  :  and  an  oracle 
was  delivered  solemnly  at  Tibet,  to  the  effect  that  no 
ultimate  prosperity  would  attend  this  great  Exodus  unless 

15  it  were  pursued  through  the  years  of  the  tiger  and  the 
hare.  .  Now  the  Kalmuck  custom  is  to  distinguish  their 
years  by  attaching  to  each  a  denomination  taken  from  one 
of  twelve  animals,  the  exact  order  of  succession  being 
absolutely  fixed,  so  that  the  cycle  revolves  of  course 

20  through  a  period  of  a  dozen  years.  Consequently,  if  the 
approaching  year  of  the  tiger  were  suffered  to  escape 
them,  in  that  case  the  expedition  must  be  delayed  for 
twelve  years  more  ;  within  which  period,  even  were  no 
other  unfavorable  changes  to  arise,  it  was  pretty  well 

25  foreseen  that  the  Russian  Government  would  take  most 
effectual  means  for  bridling  their  vagrant  propensities  by 
a  ring-fence  of  forts  or  military  posts  ;  to  say  nothing  of 
the  still  readier  plan  for  securing  their  fidelity  (a  plan 
already  talked  of  in  all  quarters)  by  exacting  a  large  body 

30  of  hostages  selected  from  the  families  of  the  most  influen- 
tial nobles.  On  these  cogent  considerations,  it  was  sol- 
emnly determined  that  this  terrific  experiment  should  be 
made  in  the  next  year  of  the  tiger,  which  happened  to  fall 
upon  the  Christian  year  1771.  With  respect  to  the 


REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS.  13 

month,  there  was,  unhappily  for  the  Kalmucks,  even  less 
latitude  allowed  to  their  choice  than  with  respect  to  the 
year.  It  was  absolutely  necessary,  or  it  was  thought  so, 
that  the  different  divisions  of  the  nation,  which  pastured 
their  flocks  on  both  banks  of  the  Wolga,  should  have  the  5 
means  of  effecting  an  instantaneous  junction,  because 
the  danger  of  being  intercepted  by  flying  columns  of  the 
imperial  armies  was  precisely  the  greatest  at  the  outset. 
Now,  from  the  want  of  bridges  or  sufficient  river  craft 
for  transporting  so  vast  a  body  of  men,  the  sole  means  10 
which  could  be  depended  upon  (especially  where  so  many 
women,  children,  and  camels  were  concerned)  was  ice; 
and  this,  in  a  state  of  sufficient  firmness,  could  not  be 
absolutely  counted  upon  before  the  month  of  January. 
Hence  it  happened  that  this  astonishing  Exodus  of  a  15 
whole  nation,  before  so  much  as  a  whisper  of  the  design 
had  begun  to  circulate  amongst  those  whom  it  most  inter- 
ested, before  it  was  even  suspected  that  any  man's  wishes 
pointed  in  that  direction,  had  been  definitely  appointed 
for  January  of  the  year  1771.  And  almost  up  to  the  20 
Christmas  of  1770  the  poor  simple  Kalmuck  herdsmen 
and  their  families  were  going  nightly  to  their  peaceful 
beds  without  even  dreaming  that  the  fiat  had  already 
gone  forth  from  their  rulers  which  consigned  those  quiet 
abodes,  together  with  the  peace  and  comfort  which  reigned  25 
within  them,  to  a  withering  desolation,  now  close  at 
hand. 

Meantime  war  raged  on  a  great  scale  between  Russia 
and  the  Sultan  ;  and,  until  the  time  arrived  for  throwing 
off  their  vassalage,  it  was  necessary  that  Oubacha  should  3° 
contribute  his  usual  contingent  of  martial  aid.  Nay,  it 
had  unfortunately  become  prudent  that  he  should  con- 
tribute much  more  than  his  usual  aid.  Human  experi- 
ence gives  ample  evidence  that  in  some  mysterious  and 


14  REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS. 

unaccountable  way  no  great  design  is  ever  agitated,  no 
matter  how  few  or  how  faithful  may  be  the  participators, 
but  that  some  presentiment — some  dim  misgiving  —  is 
kindled  amongst  those  whom  it  is  chiefly  important  to 
5  blind.  And,  however  it  might  have  happened,  certain  it 
is  that  already,  when  as  yet  no  syllable  of  the  conspiracy 
had  been  breathed  to  any  man  whose  very  existence  was 
not  staked  upon  its  concealment,  nevertheless  some  vague 
and  uneasy  jealousy  had  arisen  in  the  Russian  Cabinet 

10  as  to  the  future  schemes  of  the  Kalmuck  Khan  :  and 
very  probable  it  is  that,  but  for  the  war  then  raging,  and 
the  consequent  prudence  of  conciliating  a  very  important 
vassal,  or,  at  least,  of  abstaining  from  what  would  power- 
fully alienate  him,  even  at  that  moment  such  measures 

15  would  have  been  adopted  as  must  forever  have  inter- 
cepted the  Kalmuck  schemes.  Slight  as  were  the  jeal- 
ousies of  the  Imperial  Court,  they  had  not  escaped  the 
Machiavelian  eyes  of  Zebek  and  the  Lama.  And  under 
their  guidance,  Oubacha,  bending  to  the  circumstances  of 

20  the  moment,  and  meeting  the  jealousy  of  the  Russian 
Court  with  a  policy  corresponding  to  their  own,  strove  by 
unusual  zeal  to  efface  the  Czarina's  unfavorable  impres- 
sions. He  enlarged  the  scale  of  his  contributions,  and 
that  so  prodigiously  that  he  absolutely  carried  to  head- 

25  quarters  a  force  of  35,000  cavalry,  fully  equipped :  some 
go  further,  and  rate  the  amount  beyond  40,000  ;  but  the 
smaller  estimate  is,  at  all  events,  within  the  truth. 

With  this  magnificent  array  of  cavalry,  heavy  as  well  as 
light,  the  Khan  went  into  the  field  under  great  expecta- 

30  tions ;  and  these  he  more  than  realized.  Having  the 
good  fortune  to  be  concerned  with  so  ill-organized  and 
disorderly  a  description  of  force  as  that  which  at  all  times 
composed  the  bulk  of  a  Turkish  army,  he  carried  victory 
along  with  his  banners  ;  gained  many  partial  successes  ; 


REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS.  15 

and  at  last,  in  a  pitched  battle,  overthrew  the  Turkish 
force  opposed  to  him,  with  a  loss  of  5000  men  left  upon 
the  field. 

These  splendid  achievements  seemed  likely  to  operate 
in  various  ways  against  the  impending  revolt.  Oubacha  5 
had  now  a  strong  motive,  in  the  martial  glory  acquired, 
for  continuing  his  connection  with  the  empire  in  whose 
service  he  had  won  it,  and  by  whom  only  it  could  be  fully 
appreciated.  He  was  now  a  great  marshal  of  a  great 
empire,  one  of  the  Paladins  around  the  imperial  throne  ;  10 
in  China  he  would  be  nobody,  or  (worse  than  that)  a  men- 
dicant alien,  prostrate  at  the  feet,  and  soliciting  the  pre- 
carious alms,  of  a  prince  with  whom  he  had  no  connection. 
Besides,  it  might  reasonably  be  expected  that  the  Czar- 
ina, grateful  for  the  really  efficient  aid  given  by  the  Tartar  15 
prince,  would  confer  upon  him  such  eminent  rewards  as 
might  be  sufficient  to  anchor  his  hopes  upon  Russia,  and 
to  wean  him  from  every  possible  seduction.  These  were 
the  obvious  suggestions  of  prudence  and  good  sense  to 
every  man  who  stood  neutral  in  the  case.  But  they  were  20 
disappointed.  The  Czarina  knew  her  obligations  to  the 
Khan,  but  she  did  not  acknowledge  them.  Wherefore  ? 
That  is  a  mystery  perhaps  never  to  be  explained.  So  it 
was,  however.  The  Khan  went  unhonored  ;  no  ukase 
ever  proclaimed  his  merits  ;  and,  perhaps,  had  he  even  25 
been  abundantly  recompensed  by  Russia,  there  were 
others  who  would  have  defeated  these  tendencies  to 
reconciliation.  Erempel,  Zebek,  and  Loosang  the  Lama 
were  pledged  life -deep  to  prevent  any  accommodation ; 
and  their  efforts  were  unfortunately  seconded  by  those  of  30 
their  deadliest  enemies.  In  the  Russian  Court  there  were 
at  that  time  some  great  nobles  preoccupied  with  feelings 
of  hatred  and  blind  malice  toward  the  Kalmucks  quite  as 
strong  as  any  which  the  Kalmucks  could  harbor  toward 


16  REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS. 

Russia,  and  not,  perhaps,  so  well  founded.  Just  as  much 
as  the  Kalmucks  hated  the  Russian  yoke,  their  galling 
assumption  of  authority,  the  marked  air  of  disdain,  as 
toward  a  nation  of  ugly,  stupid,  and  filthy  barbarians, 
5  which  too  generally  marked  the  Russian  bearing  and 
language,  but,  above  all,  the  insolent  contempt,  or  even 
outrages,  which  the  Russian  governors  or  great  military 
commandants  tolerated  in  their  followers  toward  the  bar- 
barous religion  and  superstitious  mummeries  of  the  Kal- 

10  muck  priesthood  —  precisely  in  that  extent  did  the  ferocity 
of  the  Russian  resentment,  and  their  wrath  at  seeing  the 
trampled  worm  turn  or  attempt  a  feeble  retaliation,  react 
upon  the  unfortunate  Kalmucks.  At  this  crisis,  it  is  prob- 
able that  envy  and  wounded  pride,  upon  witnessing  the 

15  splendid  victories  of  Oubacha  and  Momotbacha  over  the 
Turks  and  Bashkirs,  contributed  strength  to  the  Russian 
irritation.  And  it  must  have  been  through  the  intrigues 
of  those  nobles  about  her  person  who  chiefly  smarted 
under  these  feelings  that  the  Czarina  could  ever  have 

20  lent  herself  to  the  unwise  and  ungrateful  policy  pursued 
at  this  critical  period  toward  the  Kalmuck  Khan.  That 
Czarina  was  no  longer  Elizabeth  Petrowna  ;  it  was  Cath- 
arine II.  —  a  princess  who  did  not  often  err  so  injuriously 
(injuriously  for  herself  as  much  as  for  others)  in  the  meas- 

25  ures  of  her  government.  She  had  soon  ample  reason  for 
repenting  of  her  false  policy.  Meantime,  how  much  it 
must  have  co-operated  with  the  other  motives  previously 
acting  upon  Oubacha  in  sustaining  his  determination  to 
revolt,  and  how  powerfully  it  must  have  assisted  the  efforts 

30  of  all  the  Tartar  chieftains  in  preparing  the  minds  of  their 
people  to  feel  the  necessity  of  this  difficult  enterprise,  by 
arming  their  pride  and  their  suspicions  against  the  Rus- 
sian Government,  through  the  keenness  of  their  sympathy 
with  the  wrongs  of  their  insulted  prince,  may  be  readily 


REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS.  17 

imagined.  It  is  a.  fact,  and  it  has  been  confessed  by 
candid  Russians  themselves  when  treating  of  this  great 
dismemberment,  that  the  conduct  of  the  Russian  Cabinet 
throughout  the  period  of  suspense,  and  during  the  crisis 
of  hesitation  in  the  Kalmuck  Council,  was  exactly  such  5 
as  was  most  desirable  for  the  purposes  of  the  conspira- 
tors ;  it  was  such,  in  fact,  as  to  set  the  seal  to  all  their 
machinations,  by  supplying  distinct  evidences  and  official 
vouchers  for  what  could  otherwise  have  been  at  the  most 
matters  of  doubtful  suspicion  and  indirect  presumption.  10 

Nevertheless,  in  the  face  of  all  these  arguments,  and 
even  allowing  their  weight  so  far  as  not  at  all  to  deny  the 
injustice  or  the  impolicy  of  the  imperial  ministers,  it  is 
contended  by  many  persons  who  have  reviewed  the  affair 
with  a  command  of  all  the  documents  bearing  on  the  case,  15 
more  especially  the  letters  or  minutes  of  council  subse- 
quently discovered  in  the  handwriting  of  Zebek-Dorchi, 
and  the  important  evidence  of  the  Russian  captive,  Wesel- 
off,  who  was  carried  off  by  the  Kalmucks  in  their  flight, 
that  beyond  all  doubt  Oubacha  was  powerless  for  any  20 
purpose  of  impeding  or  even  of  delaying  the  revolt.  He 
himself,  indeed,  was  under  religious  obligations  of  the 
most  terrific  solemnity  never  to  flinch  from  the  enterprise 
or  even  to  slacken  in  his  zeal  ;  for  Zebek-Dorchi,  dis- 
trusting the  firmness  of  his  resolution  under  any  unusual  25 
pressure  of  alarm  or  difficulty,  had,  in  the  very  earliest 
stage  of  the  conspiracy,  availed  himself  of  the  Khan's 
well-known  superstition,  to  engage  him,  by  means  of  pre- 
vious concert  with  the  priests  and  their  head,  the  Lama, 
in  some  dark  and  mysterious  rites  of  consecration,  termi-  30 
nating  in  oaths  under  such  terrific  sanctions  as  no  Kal- 
muck would  have  courage  to  violate.  As  far,  therefore, 
as  regarded  the  personal  share  of  the  Khan  in  what  was 
to  come,  Zebek  was  entirely  at  his  ease ;  he  knew  him  to 


18  REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS. 

be  so  deeply  pledged  by  religious  terrors  to  the  prosecu- 
tion of  the  conspiracy  that  no  honors  within  the  Czarina's 
gift  could  have  possibly  shaken  his  adhesion  ;  and  then, 
as  to  threats  from  the  same  quarter,  he  knew  him  to  be 

5  sealed  against  those  fears  by  others  of  a  gloomier  charac- 
ter, and  better  adapted  to  his  peculiar  temperament.  For 
Oubacha  was  a  brave  man,  as  respected  all  bodily  ene- 
mies or  the  dangers  of  human  warfare,  but  was  as  sensi- 
tive and  timid  as  the  most  superstitious  of  old  women  in 

10  facing  the  frowns  of  a  priest  or  under  the  vague  anticipa- 
tions of  ghostly  retributions.  But  had  it  been  otherwise, 
and  had  there  been  any  reason  to  apprehend  an  unsteady 
demeanor  on  the  part  of  this  prince  at  the  approach 
of  the  critical  moment,  such  were  the  changes  already 

15  effected  in  the  state  of  their  domestic  politics  amongst 
the  Tartars  by  the  undermining  arts  of  Zebek-Dorchi,  and 
his  ally  the  Lama,  that  very  little  importance  would  have 
attached  to  that  doubt.  All  power  was  now  effectually 
lodged  in  the  hands  of  Zebek-Dorchi.  He  was  the  true 

20  and  absolute  wielder  of  the  Kalmuck  sceptre ;  all  meas- 
ures of  importance  were  submitted  to  his  discretion,  and 
nothing  was  finally  resolved  but  under  his  dictation. 
This  result  he  had  brought  about,  in  a  year  or  two,  by 
means  sufficiently  simple  :  first  of  all,  by  availing  himself 

25  of  the  prejudice  in  his  favor,  so  largely  diffused  amongst 
the  lowest  of  the  Kalmucks,  that  his  own  title  to  the 
throne  in  quality  of  great-grandson  in  a  direct  line  from 
Ajouka,  the  most  illustrious  of  all  the  Kalmuck  Khans, 
stood  upon  a  better  basis  than  that  of  Oubacha,  who 

30  derived  from  a  collateral  branch  ;  secondly,  with  respect 
to  the  sole  advantage  which  Oubacha  possessed  above 
himself  in  the  ratification  of  his  title,  by  improving  this 
difference  between  their  situations  to  the  disadvantage 
of  his  competitor,  as  one  who  had  not  scrupled  to  accept 


REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS.  19 

that  triumph  from  an  alien  power  at  the  price  of  his  inde- 
pendence, which  he  himself  (as  he  would  have  it  under- 
stood) disdained  to  court ;  thirdly,  by  his  own  talents 
and  address,  coupled  with  the  ferocious  energy  of  his 
moral  character ;  fourthly  —  and  perhaps  in  an  equal  5 
degree  —  by  the  criminal  facility  and  good  nature  of 
Oubacha  ;  finally  (which  is  remarkable  enough,  as  illus- 
trating the  character  of  the  man),  by  that  very  new  mod- 
elling of  the  Sarga,  or  Privy  Council,  which  he  had  used 
as  a  principal  topic  of  abuse  and  malicious  insinuation  10 
against  the  Russian  Government,  whilst,  in  reality,  he 
first  had  suggested  the  alteration  to  the  Empress,  and 
he  chiefly  appropriated  the  political  advantages  which  it 
was  fitted  to  yield.  For,  as  he  was  himself  appointed  the 
chief  of  the  Sargatchi,  and  as  the  pensions  of  the  inferior  15 
Sargatchi  passed  through  his  hands,  whilst  in  effect  they 
owed  their  appointments  to  his  nomination,  it  may  be 
easily  supposed  that,  whatever  power  existed  in  the  state 
capable  of  controlling  the  Khan,  being  held  by  the  Sarga 
under  its  new  organization,  and  this  body  being  com-  20 
pletely  under  his  influence,  the  final  result  was  to  throw 
all  the  functions  of  the  state,  whether  nominally  in  the 
prince  or  in  the  council,  substantially  into  the  hands  of 
this  one  man  ;  whilst,  at  the  same  time,  from  the  strict 
league  which  he  maintained  with  the  Lama,  all  the  thun-  25 
ders  of  the  spiritual  power  were  always  ready  to  come  in 
aid  of  the  magistrate,  or  to  supply  his  incapacity  in  cases 
which  he  could  not  reach. 

But  the  time  was  now  rapidly  approaching  for  the 
mighty  experiment.  The  day  was  drawing  near  on  which  30 
the  signal  was  to  be  given  for  raising  the  standard  of 
revolt,  and,  by  a  combined  movement  on  both  sides  of  the 
Wolga,  for  spreading  the  smoke  of  one  vast  conflagration 
that  should  wrap  in  a  common  blaze  their  own  huts  and 


20  REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS. 

the  stately  cities  of  their  enemies  over  the  breadth  and 
length  of  those  great  provinces  in  which  their  flocks  were 
dispersed.  The  year  of  the  tiger  was  now  within  one 
little  month  of  its  commencement  ;  the  fifth  morning  of 
5  that  year  was  fixed  for  the  fatal  day  when  the  fortunes 
and  happiness  of  a  whole  nation  were  to  be  put  upon  the 
hazard  of  a  dicer's  throw  ;  and  as  yet  that  nation  was  in 
profound  ignorance  of  the  whole  plan.  The  Khan,  such 
was  the  kindness  of  his  nature,  could  not  bring  himself  to 

10  make  the  revelation  so  urgently  required.  It  was  clear, 
however,  that  this  could  not  be  delayed  ;  and  Zebek- 
Dorchi  took  the  task  willingly  upon  himself.  But  where 
or  how  should  this  notification  be  made,  so  as  to  exclude 
Russian  hearers  ?  After  some  deliberation  the  following 

15  plan  was  adopted:  —  Couriers,  it  was  contrived,  should 
arrive  in  furious  haste,  one  upon  the  heels  of  another, 
reporting  a  sudden  inroad  of  the  Kirghises  and  Bashkirs 
upon  the  Kalmuck  lands,  at  a  point  distant  about  120 
miles.  Thither  all  the  Kalmuck  families,  according  to 

20  immemorial  custom,  were  required  to  send  a  separate  rep- 
resentative ;  and  there,  accordingly,  within  three  clays,  all 
appeared.  The  distance,  the  solitary  ground  appointed 
for  the  rendezvous,  the  rapidity  of  the  march,  all  tended 
to  make  it  almost  certain  that  no  Russian  could  be 

25  present.  Zebek-Dorchi  then  came  forward.  lie  did 
not  waste  many  words  upon  rhetoric.  He  unfurled  an 
immense  sheet  of  parchment,  visible  from  the  outermost 
distance  at  which  any  of  this  vast  crowd  could  stand  ; 
the  total  number  amounted  to  80,000  ;  all  saw,  and  many 

30  heard.  They  were  told  of  the  oppressions  of  Russia ; 
of  her  pride  and  haughty  disdain,  evidenced  toward  them 
by  a  thousand  acts  ;  of  her  contempt  for  their  religion  ; 
of  her  determination  to  reduce  them  to  absolute  slavery  ; 
of  the  preliminary  measures  she  had  already  taken  by 


REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS.  21 

erecting  forts  upon  many  of  the  great  rivers  of  their  neigh- 
borhood ;  of  the  ulterior  intentions  she  thus  announced 
to  circumscribe  their  pastoral  lands,  until  they  would  all 
be  obliged  to  renounce  their  flocks,  and  to  collect  in 
towns  like  Sarepta,  there  to  pursue  mechanical  and  servile  5 
trades  of  shoemaker,  tailor,  and  weaver,  such  as  the  free- 
born  Tartar  had  always  disdained.  "  Then  again,"  said 
the  subtle  prince,  "  she  increases  her  military  levies  upon 
our  population  every  year.  We  pour  out  our  blood  as 
young  men  in  her  defence,  or,  more  often,  in  support  of  10 
her  insolent  aggressions  ;  and,  as  old  men,  we  reap  noth- 
ing from  our  sufferings  nor  benefit  by  our  survivorship 
where  so  many  are  sacrificed."  At  this  point  of  his 
harangue  Zebek  produced  several  papers  (forged,  as  it  is 
generally  believed,  by  himself  and  the  Lama),  containing  15 
projects  of  the  Russian  Court  for  a  general  transfer  of 
the  eldest  sons,  taken  en  masse  from  the  greatest  Kalmuck 
families,  to  the  Imperial  Court.  "  Now,  let  this  be  once 
accomplished,"  he  argued,  "  and  there  is  an  end  of  all 
useful  resistance  from  that  day  forwards.  Petitions  we  20 
might  make,  or  even  remonstrances  ;  as  men  of  words, 
we  might  play  a  bold  part ;  but  for  deeds  ;  for  that  sort 
of  language  by  which  our  ancestors  were  used  to  speak  — 
holding  us  by  such  a  chain,  Russia  would  make  a  jest  of 
our  wishes,  knowing  full  well  that  we  should  not  dare  to  25 
make  any  effectual  movement. 

Having  thus  sufficiently  roused  the  angry  passions  of 
his  vast  audience,  and  having  alarmed  their  fears  by  this 
pretended  scheme  against  their  firstborn  (an  artifice 
which  was  indispensable  to  his  purpose,  because  it  met  30 
beforehand  every  form  of  amendment  to  his  proposal 
coming  from  the  more  moderate  nobles,  who  would  not 
otherwise  have  failed  to  insist  upon  trying  the  effect  of 
bold  addresses  to  the  Empress  before  resorting  to  any 


22  REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS. 

desperate  extremity),  Zebek-Dorchi  opened  his  scheme  of 
revolt,  and,  if  so,  of  instant  revolt ;  since  any  preparations 
reported  at  St.  Petersburg  would  be  a  signal  for  the 
armies  of  Russia  to  cross  into  such  positions  from  all 
5  parts  of  Asia  as  would  effectually  intercept  their  march. 
It  is  remarkable,  however,  that  with  all  his  audacity  and 
his  reliance  upon  the  momentary  excitement  of  the  Kal- 
mucks, the  subtle  prince  did  not  venture,  at  this  stage  of 
his  seduction,  to  make  so  startling  a  proposal  as  that  of 

10  a  flight  to  China.  All  that  he  held  out  for  the  present 
was  a  rapid  march  to  the  Temba  or  some  other  great 
river,  which  they  were  to  cross,  and  to  take  up  a  strong 
position  on  the  farther  bank,  from  which,  as  from  a  post 
of  conscious  security,  they  could  hold  a  bolder  language 

15  to  the  Czarina,  and  one  which  would  have  a  better  chance 
of  winning  a  favorable  audience. 

These  things,  in  the  irritated  condition  of  the  simple 
Tartars,  passed  by  acclamation  ;  and  all  returned  home- 
ward to  push  forward  with  the  most  furious  speed  the 

20  preparations  for  their  awful  undertaking.  Rapid  and 
energetic  these  of  necessity  were  ;  and  in  that  degree 
they  became  noticeable  and  manifest  to  the  Russians  who 
happened  to  be  intermingled  with  the  different  hordes, 
either  on  commercial  errands,  or  as  agents  officially  from 

25  the  Russian  Government,  some  in  a  financial,  others  in  a 
diplomatic  character. 

Among  these  last  (indeed,  at  the  head  of  them)  was  a 
Russian  of  some  distinction,  by  name  Kichinskoi  —  a  man 
memorable  for  his  vanity,  and  memorable  also  as  one  of 

30  the  many  victims  to  the  Tartar  revolution.  This  Kichin- 
skoi had  been  sent  by  the  Empress  as  her  envoy  to  over- 
look the  conduct  of  the  Kalmucks.  He  was  styled  the 
Grand  Pristaw,  or  Great  Commissioner,  and  was  univer- 
sally known  amongst  the  Tartar  tribes  by  this  title.  His 


REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS.  23 

mixed  character  of  ambassador  and  of  political  surreillant, 
combined  with  the  dependent  state  of  the  Kalmucks, 
gave  him  a  real  weight  in  the  Tartar  councils,  and  might 
have  given  him  a  far  greater  had  not  his  outrageous 
self-conceit  and  his  arrogant  confidence  in  his  own  5 
authority,  as  due  chiefly  to  his  personal  qualities  for 
command,  led  him  into  such  harsh  displays  of  power, 
and  menaces  so  odious  to  the  Tartar  pride,  as  very  soon 
made  him  an  object  of  their  profoundest  malice.  He  had 
publicly  insulted  the  Khan  ;  and,  upon  making  a  commu-  10 
nication  to  him  to  the  effect  that  some  reports  began  to 
circulate,  and  even  to  reach  the  Empress,  of  a  design  in 
agitation  to  fly  from  the  imperial  dominions,  lie  had  ven- 
tured to  say,  "  But  this  you  dare  not  attempt ;  I  laugh  at 
such  rumors  ;  yes,  Khan,  I  laugh  at  them  to  the  Empress;  15 
for  you  are  a  chained  bear,  and  that  you  know."  The 
Khan  turned  away  on  his  heel  with  marked  disdain  ;  and 
the  Pristaw,  foaming  at  the  mouth,  continued  to  utter, 
amongst  those  of  the  Khan's  attendants  who  stayed 
behind  to  catch  his  real  sentiments  in  a  moment  of  un-  20 
guarded  passion,  all  that  the  blindest  frenzy  of  rage  could 
suggest  to  the  most  presumptuous  of  fools.  It  was  now 
ascertained  that  suspicion  had  arisen  ;  but,  at  the  same 
time,  it  was  ascertained  that  the  Pristaw  spoke  no  more 
than  the  truth  in  representing  himself  to  have  discredited  25 
these  suspicions.  The  fact  was  that  the  mere  infatuation 
of  vanity  made  him  believe  that  nothing  could  go  on  un- 
detected by  his  all-piercing  sagacity,  and  that  no  rebellion 
could  prosper  when  rebuked  by  his  commanding  presence. 
The  Tartars,  therefore,  pursued  their  preparations,  con-  30 
fiding  in  the  obstinate  blindness  of  the  Grand  Pristaw  as 
in  their  perfect  safeguard,  and  such  it  proved  —  to  his 
own  ruin  as  well  as  that  of  myriads  beside. 

Christmas  arrived  ;  and,  a  little  before  that  time,  courier 


24  REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS. 

upon  courier  came  dropping  in,  one  upon  the  very  heels 
of  another,  to  St.  Petersburg,  assuring  the  Czarina  that 
beyond  all  doubt  the  Kalmucks  were  in  the  very  crisis  of 
departure.  These  dispatches  came  from  the  Governor 
5  of  Astrachan,  and  copies  were  instantly  forwarded  to 
Kichinskoi.  Now,  it  happened  that  between  this  gov- 
ernor—  a  Russian  named  Beketoff  —  and  the  Pristaw 
had  been  an  ancient  feud.  The  very  name  of  Beketoff 
inflamed  his  resentment ;  and  no  sooner  did  he  see  that 

10  hated  name  attached  to  the  dispatch  than  he  felt  himself 
confirmed  in  his  former  views  with  tenfold  bigotry,  and 
wrote  instantly,  in  terms  of  the  most  pointed  ridicule, 
against  the  new  alarmist,  pledging  his  own  head  upon  the 
visionariness  of  his  alarms.  Beketoff,  however,  was  not 

15  to  be  put  down  by  a  few  hard  words,  or  by  ridicule  :  he 
persisted  in  his  statements ;  the  Russian  ministry  were 
confounded  by  the  obstinacy  of  the  disputants  ;  and  some 
were  beginning  even  to  treat  the  Governor  of  Astrachan 
as  a  bore,  and  as  the  dupe  of  his  own  nervous  terrors, 

20  when  the  memorable  day  arrived,  the  fatal  5th  of  January, 
which  forever  terminated  the  dispute  and  put  a  seal  upon 
the  earthly  hopes  and  fortunes  of  unnumbered  myriads. 
The  Governor  of  Astrachan  was  the  first  to  hear  the  news. 
Stung  by  the  mixed  furies  of  jealousy,  of  triumphant 

25  vengeance,  and  of  anxious  ambition,  he  sprang  into  his 
sledge,  and,  at  the  rate  of  300  miles  a  day,  pursued  his 
route  to  St.  Petersburg — rushed  into  the  Imperial  pres- 
ence—  announced  the  total  realization  of  his  worst  pre- 
dictions ;  and,  upon  the  confirmation  of  this  intelligence 

30  by  subsequent  dispatches  from  many  different  posts  on 
the  Wolga,  he  received  an  imperial  commission  to  seize 
the  person  of  his  deluded  enemy  and  to  keep  him  in  strict 
captivity.  These  orders  were  eagerly  fulfilled ;  and  the 
unfortunate  Kichinskoi  soon  afterwards  expired  of  grief 


REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS.  25 

and  mortification  in  the  gloomy  solitude  of  a  dungeon  — 
a  victim  to  his  own  immeasurable  vanity  and  the  blinding 
self-delusions  of  a  presumption  that  refused  all  warning. 
The  Governor  of  Astrachan  had  been  but  too  faithful 
a  prophet.  Perhaps  even  he  was  surprised  at  the  sud-  5 
denness  with  which  the  verification  followed  his  reports. 
Precisely  on  the  5th  of  January,  the  day  so  solemnly 
appointed  under  religious  sanctions  by  the  Lama,  the 
Kalmucks  on  the  east  bank  of  the  Wolga  were  seen  at 
the  earliest  dawn  of  day  assembling  by  troops  and  10 
squadrons  and  in  the  tumultuous  movement  of  some  great 
morning  of  battle.  Tens  of  thousands  continued  moving 
off  the  ground  at  every  half  hour's  interval.  Women 
and  children,  to  the  amount  of  two  hundred  thousand  and 
upward,  were  placed  upon  wagons  or  upon  camels,  and  15 
drew  off  by  masses  of  twenty  thousand  at  once  —  placed 
under  suitable  escorts,  and  continually  swelled  in  numbers 
by  other  outlying  bodies  of  the  horde,  who  kept  falling 
in  at  various  distances  upon  the  first  and  second  day's 
march.  From  sixty  to  eighty  thousand  of  those  who  20 
were  the  best  mounted  stayed  behind  the  rest  of  the 
tribes,  with  purposes  of  devastation  and  plunder  more 
violent  than  prudence  justified  or  the  amiable  character 
of  the  Khan  could  be  supposed  to  approve.  But  in  this, 
as  in  other  instances,  he  was  completely  overruled  by  the  25 
malignant  counsels  of  Zebek-Dorchi.  The  first  tempest 
of  the  desolating  fury  of  the  Tartars  discharged  itself 
upon  their  own  habitations.  But  this,  as  cutting  off  all 
infirm  looking  backward  from  the  hardships  of  their 
march,  had  been  thought  so  necessary  a  measure  by  all  30 
the  chieftains  that  even  Oubacha  himself  was  the  first  to 
authorize  the  act  by  his  own  example.  He  seized  a  torch 
previously  prepared  with  materials  the  most  durable  as 
well  as  combustible,  and  steadily  applied  it  to  the  timbers 


26  REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS. 

of  his  own  palace.  Nothing  was  saved  from  the  general 
wreck  except  the  portable  part  of  the  domestic  utensils 
and  that  part  of  the  woodwork  which  could  be  applied 
to  the  manufacture  of  the  long  Tartar  lances.  This 
5  chapter  in  their  memorable  day's  work  being  finished, 
and  the  whole  of  their  villages  throughout  a  district  of 
ten  thousand  square  miles  in  one  simultaneous  blaze,  the 
Tartars  waited  for  further  orders. 

These,  it  was  intended,  should  have  taken  a  character  of 

10  valedictory  vengeance,  and  thus  have  left  behind  to  the 
Czarina  a  dreadful  commentary  upon  the  main  motives 
of  their  flight.  It  was  the  purpose  of  Zebek-Dorchi  that 
all  the  Russian  towns,  churches,  and  buildings  of  every 
description  should  be  given  up  to  pillage  and  destruction, 

15  and  such  treatment  applied  to  the  defenceless  inhabi- 
tants as  might  naturally  be  expected  from  a  fierce  people 
already  infuriated  by  the  spectacle  of  their  own  outrages, 
and  by  the  bloody  retaliations  which  they  must  necessarily 
have  provoked.  This  part  of  the  tragedy,  however,  was 

20  happily  intercepted  by  a  providential  disappointment  at 
the  very  crisis  of  departure.  It  has  been  mentioned 
already  that  the  motive  for  selecting  the  depth  of  winter 
as  the  season  of  flight  (which  otherwise  was  obviously 
the  very  worst  possible)  had  been  the  impossibility  of 

2S  effecting  a  junction  sufficiently  rapid  with  the  tribes  on 
the  west  of  the  Wolga,  in  the  absence  of  bridges,  unless 
by  a  natural  bridge  of  ice.  For  this  one  advantage  the 
Kalmuck  leaders  had  consented  to  aggravate  by  a  thou- 
sand-fold the  calamities  inevitable  to  a  rapid  flight  over 

30  boundless  tracts  of  country  with  women,  children,  and 
herds  of  cattle  —  for  this  one  single  advantage  ;  and  yet, 
after  all,  it  was  lost.  The  reason  never  has  been  explained 
satisfactorily,  but  the  fact  was  such.  Some  have  said 
that  the  signals  were  not  properly  concerted  for  marking 


REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS.  27 

the  moment'of  absolute  departure  —  that  is,  for  signify- 
ing whether  the  settled  intention  of  the  Eastern  Kalmucks 
might  not  have  been  suddenly  interrupted  by  adverse 
intelligence.  Others  have  supposed  that  the  ice  might 
not  be  equally  strong  on  both  sides  of  the  river,  and  5 
might  even  be  generally  insecure  for  the  treading  of 
heavy  and  heavily  laden  animals  such  as  camels.  But 
the  prevailing  notion  is  that  some  accidental  movements 
on  the  3d  and  4th  of  January  of  Russian  troops  in  the 
neighborhood  of  the  Western  Kalmucks,  though  really  10 
having  no  reference  to  them  or  their  plans,  had  been  con- 
strued into  certain  signs  that  all  was  discovered,  and  that 
the  prudence  of  the  Western  chieftains,  who,  from  situa- 
tion, had  never  been  exposed  to  those  intrigues  by  which 
Zebek-Dorchi  had  practised  upon  the  pride  of  the  Eastern  15 
tribes,  now  stepped  in  to  save  their  people  from  ruin. 
Be  the  cause  what  it  might,  it  is  certain  that  the  Western 
Kalmucks  were  in  some  way  prevented  from  forming  the 
intended  junction  with  their  brethren  of^  the  opposite 
bank ;  and  the  result  was  that  at  least  one  hundred  20 
thousand  of  these  Tartars  were  left  behind  in  Russia. 
This  accident  it  was  which  saved  their  Russian  neighbors 
universally  from  the  desolation  which  else  awaited  them. 
One  general  massacre  and  conflagration  would  assuredly 
have  surprised  them,  to  the  utter  extermination  of  their  25 
property,  their  houses,  and  themselves,  had  it  not  been 
for  this  disappointment.  But  the  Eastern  chieftains  did 
not  dare  to  put  to  hazard  the  safety  of  their  brethren 
under  the  first  impulse  of  the  Czarina's  vengeance  for  so 
dreadful  a  tragedy  ;  for,  as  they  were  well  aware  of  too  many  30 
circumstances  by  which  she  might  discover  the  concurrence 
of  the  Western  people  in  the  general  scheme  of  revolt, 
they  justly  feared  that  she  would  thence  infer  their  concur- 
rence also  in  the  bloody  events  which  marked  its  outset. 


28  REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS. 

Little  did  the  Western  Kalmucks  guess  what  reasons 
they  also  had  for  gratitude,  on  account  of  an  interposition 
so  unexpected,  and  which  at  the  moment  they  so  generally 
deplored.  Could  they  but  have  witnessed  the  thousandth 

5  part  of  the  sufferings  which  overtook  their  Eastern  breth- 
ren in  the  first  month  of  their  sad  flight,  they  would  have 
blessed  Heaven  for  their  own  narrow  escape ;  and  yet 
these  sufferings  of  the  first  month  were  but  a  prelude  or 
foretaste  comparatively  slight  of  those  which  afterward 

10  succeeded. 

For  now  began  to  unroll  the  most  awful  series  of 
calamities,  and  the  most  extensive,  which  is  anywhere 
recorded  to  have  visited  the  sons  and  daughters  of  men. 
It  is  possible  that  the  sudden  inroads  of  destroying 

15  nations,  such  as  the  Huns,  or  the  Avars,  or  the  Mongol 
Tartars,  may  have  inflicted  misery  as  extensive  ;  but  there 
the  misery  and  the  desolation  would  be  sudden,  like  the 
flight  of  volleying  lightning.  Those  who  were  spared  at 
first  would  generally  be  spared  to  the  end ;  those  who 

20  perished  would  perish  instantly.  It  is  possible  that  the 
French  retreat  from  Moscow  may  have  made  some  nearer 
approach  to  this  calamity  in  duration,  though  still  a  feeble 
and  miniature  approach  ;  for  the  French  sufferings  did 
not  commence  in  good  earnest  until  about  one  month 

25  from  the  time  of  leaving  Moscow ;  and  though  it  is  true 
that  afterward  the  vials  of  wrath  were  emptied  upon  the 
devoted  army  for  six  or  seven  weeks  in  succession,  yet 
what  is  that  to  this  Kalmuck  tragedy,  which  lasted  for 
more  than  as  many  months  ?  But  the  main  feature  of 

30  horror,  by  which  the  Tartar  march  was  distinguished  from 
the  French,  lies  in  the  accompaniment  of  women  l  and 

1  Singular  it  is,  and  not  generally  known,  that  Grecian  women 
accompanied  the  anabasis  of  the  younger  Cyrus  and  the  subsequent 
retreat  of  the  Ten  Thousand.  Xenophon  affirms  that  there  were 


REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS.  29 

children.  There  were  both,  it  is  true,  with  the  French 
army,  but  so  few  as  to  bear  no  visible  proportion  to  the 
total  numbers  concerned.  The  French,  in  short,  were 
merely  an  army —  a  host  of  professional  destroyers,  whose 
regular  trade  was  bloodshed,  and  whose  regular  element  5 
was  danger  and  suffering.  But  the  Tartars  were  a  nation 
carrying  along  with  them  more  than  two  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand  women  and  children,  utterly  unequal,  for 
the  most  part,  to  any  contest  with  the  calamities  before 
them.  The  Children  of  Israel  were  in  the  same  circum-  10 
stances  as  to  the  accompaniment  of  their  families ;  but 
they  were  released  from  the  pursuit  of  their  enemies  in  a 
very  early  stage  of  their  flight;  and  their  subsequent  resi- 
dence in  the  Desert  was  not  a  march,  but  a  continued  halt 
and  under  a  continued  interposition  of  Heaven  for  their  15 
comfortable  support.  Earthquakes,  again,  however  com- 
prehensive in  their  ravages,  are  shocks  of  a  moment's 
duration. .  A  much  nearer  approach  made  to  the  wide 
range  and  the  long  duration  of  the  Kalmuck  tragedy  may 
have  been  in  a  pestilence  such  as  that  which  visited  20 
Athens  in  the  Peloponnesian  war,  or  London  in  the  reign 
of  Charles  II.  There,  also,  the  martyrs  were  counted  by 
myriads,  and  the  period  of  the  desolation  was  counted 
by  months.  But,  after  all,  the  total  amount  of  destruction 
was  on  a  smaller  scale  ;  and  there  was  this  feature  of  25 
alleviation  to  the  conscious  pressure  of  the  calamity —  that 
the  misery  was  withdrawn  from  public  notice  into  private 
chambers  and  hospitals.  The  siege  of  Jerusalem  by 
Vespasian  and  his  son,  taken  in  its  entire  circumstances, 
comes  nearest  of  all  —  for  breadth  and  depth  of  suffering,  30 
for  duration,  for  the  exasperation  of  the  suffering  from 

"  many  "  women  in  the  Greek  army  —  iroXXat  ^<rav  eratpai  tv  r$ 
ffTparetituiTi. ;  and  in  a  late  stage  of  that  trying  expedition  it  is  evident 
that  women  were  amongst  the  survivors. 


30  REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS. 

without  by  internal  feuds,  and,  finally,  for  that  last  most 
appalling  expression  of  the  furnace  heat  of  the  anguish  in 
its  power  to  extinguish  the  natural  affections  even  of 
maternal  love.  But,  after  all,  each  case  had  circumstances 

5  of  romantic  misery  peculiar  to  itself  —  circumstances 
without  precedent,  and  (wherever  human  nature  is  enno- 
bled by  Christianity),  it  may  be  confidently  hoped,  never 
to  be  repeated. 

The  first  point  to  be  reached,  before  any  hope  of  repose 

10  could  be  encouraged,  was  the  River  Jaik.  This  was  not 
above  300  miles  from  the  main  point  of  departure  on  the 
Wolga  ;  and,  if  the  march  thither  was  to  be  a  forced  one 
and  a  severe  one,  it  was  alleged,  on  the  other  hand,  that 
the  suffering  would  be  the  more  brief  and  transient; 

15  one  summary  exertion,  not  to  be  repeated,  and  all  was 

achieved.      Forced  the  march  was,   and  severe  beyond 

example:  there  the  forewarning  proved  correct;  but  the 

promised  rest  proved  a  mere  phantom  of  the  wilderness 

—  a  visionary  rainbow,  which  fled  before  their  hope-sick 

20  eyes,  across  these  interminable  solitudes,  for  seven  months 
of  hardship  and  calamity,  without  a  pause.  These  suffer- 
ings, by  their  very  nature  and  the  circumstances  under 
which  they  arose,  were  (like  the  scenery  of  the  steppes) 
somewhat  monotonous  in  their  coloring  and  external 

25  features ;  what  variety,  however,  there  was,  will  be  most 
naturally  exhibited  by  tracing  historically  the  successive 
stages  of  the  general  misery  exactly  as  it  unfolded  itself 
under  the  double  agency  of  weakness  still  increasing  from 
within  and  hostile  pressure  from  without.  Viewed  in  this 

30  manner,  under  the  real  order  of  development,  it  is  remark- 
able that  these  sufferings  of  the  Tartars,  though  under 
the  moulding  hands  of  accident,  arrange  themselves 
almost  with  a  scenical  propriety.  They  seem  combined 
as  with  the  skill  of  an  artist;  the  intensity  of  the  misery 


REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS.  31 

advancing  regularly  with  the  advances  of  the  march,  and 
the  stages  of  the  calamity  corresponding  to  the  stages 
of  the  route ;  so  that,  upon  raising  the  curtain  which 
veils  the  great  catastrophe,  we  behold  one  vast  climax  of 
anguish,  towering  upward  by  regular  gradations  as  if  con-  5 
structed  artificially  for  picturesque  effect  —  a  result  which 
might  not  have  been  surprising  had  it  been  reasonable  to 
anticipate  the  same  rate  of  speed,  and  even  an  accelerated 
rate,  as  prevailing -through  the  latter  stages  of  the  expedi- 
tion. But  it  seemed,  on  the  contrary,  most  reasonable  to  10 
calculate  upon  a  continual  decrement  in  the  rate  of  motion 
according  to  the  increasing  distance  from  the  headquarters 
of  the  pursuing  enemy.  This  calculation,  however,  was 
defeated  by  the  extraordinary  circumstance  that  the  Rus- 
sian armies  did  not  begin  to  close  in  very  fiercely  upon  15 
the  Kalmucks  until  after  they  had  accomplished  a  distance 
of  full  2000  miles:  1000  miles  farther  on  the  assaults 
became  even  more  tumultuous  and  murderous:  and  already 
the  great  shadows  of  the  Chinese  Wall  were  dimly  descried, 
when  the  frenzy  and  acharnement  of  the  pursuers  and  the  20 
bloody  desperation  of  the  miserable  fugitives  had  reached 
its  uttermost  extremity.  Let  us  briefly  rehearse  the  main 
stages  of  the  misery  and  trace  the  ascending  steps  of  the 
tragedy,  according  to  the  great  divisions  of  the  route 
marked  out  by  the  central  rivers  of  Asia.  25. 

The  first  stage,  we  have  already  said,  was  from  the 
Wolga  to  the  Jaik;  the  distance  about  300  miles;  the  time 
allowed  seven  days.  For  the  first  week,  therefore,  the 
rate  of  marching  averaged  about  43  English  miles  a  day. 
The  weather  was  cold,  but  bracing;  and,  at  a  more  30 
moderate  pace,  this  part  of  the  journey  might  have  been 
accomplished  without  much  distress  by  a  people  as  hardy 
as  the  Kalmucks  :  as  it  was,  the  cattle  suffered  greatly 
from  overdriving;  milk  began  to  fail  even  for  the  children; 


32  REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS. 

the  sheep  perished  by  wholesale ;  and  the  children  them- 
selves were  saved  only  by  the  innumerable  camels. 

The  Cossacks  who  dwelt  upon  the  banks  of  the  Jaik 
were  the  first  among  the  subjects  of  Russia  to  come  into 
5  collision  with  the  Kalmucks.  Great  was  their  surprise  at 
the  suddenness  of  the  irruption,  and  great  also  their  con- 
sternation ;  for,  according  to  their  settled  custom,  by  far 
the  greater  part  of  their  number  was  absent  during  the 
winter  months  at  the  fisheries  upon  the  Caspian.  Some 

10  who  were  liable  to  surprise  at  the  most  exposed  points 
fled  in  crowds  to  the  fortress  of  Koulagina,  which  was 
immediately  invested  and  summoned  by  Oubacha.  He 
had,  however,  in  his  train  only  a  few  light  pieces  of 
artillery;  and  the  Russian  commandant  at  Koulagina, 

15  being  aware  of  the  hurried  circumstances  in  which  the 
Khan  was  placed,  and  that  he  stood  upon  the  very  edge, 
as  it  were,  of  a  renewed  flight,  felt  encouraged  by  these 
considerations  to  a  more  obstinate  resistance  than  might 
else  have  been  advisable  with  an  enemy  so  little  disposed 

20  to  observe  the  usages  of  civilized  warfare.  The  period  of 
his  anxiety  was  not  long.  On  the  fifth  day  of  the  siege 
he  descried  from  the  walls  a  succession  of  Tartar 
couriers,  mounted  upon  fleet  Bactrian  camels,  crossing 
the  vast  plains  around  the  fortress  at  a  furious  pace  and 

25  riding  into  the  Kalmuck  encampment  at  various  points. 
Great  agitation  appeared  immediately  to  follow:  orders 
were  soon  after  dispatched  in  all  directions;  and  it  became 
speedily  known  that  upon  a  distant  flank  of  the  Kalmuck 
movement  a  bloody  and  exterminating  battle  had  been 

3°  fought  the  day  before,  in  which  one  entire  tribe  of  the 
Khan's  dependents,  numbering  not  less  than  9000  fight- 
ing men,  had  perished  to  the  last  man.  This  was  the 
ouloss,  or  clan,  called  Feka-Zechorr,  between  whom  and 
the  Cossacks  there  was  a  feud  of  ancient  standing.  In 


REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS.  33 

selecting,  therefore,  the  points  of  attack,  on  occasion  of 
the  present  hasty  inroad,,  the  Cossack  chiefs  were  natu- 
rally eager  so  to  direct  their  efforts  as  to  combine  with 
the  service  of  the  Empress  some  gratification  to  their  own 
party  hatreds,  more  especially  as  the  present  was  likely  5 
to  be  their  final  opportunity  for  revenge  if  the  Kalmuck 
evasion  should  prosper.  Having,  therefore,  concentrated 
as  large  a  body  of  Cossack  cavalry  as  circumstances 
allowed,  they  attacked  the  hostile  ouloss  with  a  precipita- 
tion which  denied  to  it  all  means  for  communicating  with  10 
Oubacha;  for  the  necessity  of  commanding  an  ample  range 
of  pasturage,  to  meet  the  necessities  of  their  vast  flocks 
and  herds,  had  separated  this  onloss  from  the  Khan's 
headquarters  by  an  interval  of  80  miles  ;  and  thus  it  was, 
and  not  from  oversight,  that  it  came  to  be  thrown  entirely  15 
upon  its  own  resources.  These  had  proved  insufficient : 
retreat,  from  the  exhausted  state  of  their  horses  and 
camels,  no  less  than  from  the  prodigious  encumbrances 
of  their  live  stock,  was  absolutely  out  of  the  question  : 
quarter  was  disdained  on  the  one  side,  and  would  not  20 
have  been  granted  on  the  other:  and  thus  it  had  happened 
that  the  setting  sun  of  that  one  day  (the  thirteenth  from 
the  first  opening  of  the  revolt)  threw  his  parting  rays  upon 
the  final  agonies  of  an  ancient  ouloss,  stretched  upon  a 
bloody  field,  who  on  that  day's  dawning  had  held  and  25 
styled  themselves  an  independent  nation. 

Universal  consternation  was  diffused  through  the  wide 
borders  of  the  Khan's  encampment  by  this  disastrous 
intelligence,  not  so  much  on  account  of  the  numbers 
slain,  or  the  total  extinction  of  a  powerful  ally,  as  be-  30 
cause  the  position  of  the  Cossack  force  was  likely  to  put 
to  hazard  the  future  advances  of  the  Kalmucks,  or  at 
least  to  retard  and  hold  them  in  check  until  the  heavier 
columns  of  the  Russian  army  should  arrive  upon  their 


34  REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS. 

flanks.  The  siege  of  Koulagina  was  instantly  raised  ; 
and  that  signal,  so  fatal  to  the  happiness  of  the  women 
and  their  children,  once  again  resounded  through  the 
tents  —  the  signal  for  flight,  and  this  time  for  a  flight 
5  more  rapid  than  ever.  About  150  miles  ahead  of  their 
present  position,  there  arose  a  tract  of  hilly  country, 
forming  a  sort  of  margin  to  the  vast,  sealike  expanse  of 
champaign  savannas,  steppes,  and  occasionally  of  sandy 
deserts,  which  stretched  away  on  each  side  of  this  margin 

10  both  eastwards  and  westwards.  Pretty  nearly  in  the 
centre  of  this  hilly  range  lay  a  narrow  defile,  through 
which  passed  the  nearest  and  the  most  practicable  route 
to  the  River  Torgau  (the  farther  bank  of  which  river 
offered  the  next  great  station  of  security  for  a  general 

15  halt).  It  was  the  more  essential  to  gain  this  pass  before 
the  Cossacks,  inasmuch  as  not  only  would  the  delay  in 
forcing  the  pass  give  time  to  the  Russian  pursuing 
columns  for  combining  their  attacks  and  for  bringing 
up  their  artillery,  but  also  because  (even  if  all  enemies  in 

20  pursuit  were  thrown  out  of  the  question)  it  was  held,  by 
those  best  acquainted  with  the  difficult  and  obscure  geog- 
raphy of  these  pathless  steppes  —  that  the  loss  of  this  one 
narrow  strait  amongst  the  hills  would  have  the  effect  of 
throwing  them  (as  their  only  alternative  in  a  case  where 

25  so  wide  a  sweep  of  pasturage  was  required)  upon  a  circuit 
of  at  least  500  miles  extra ;  besides  that,  after  all,  this 
circuitous  route  would  carry  them  to  the  Torgau  at  a  point 
unfitted  for  the  passage  of  their  heavy  baggage.  The 
defile  in  the  hills,  therefore,  it  was  resolved  to  gain ;  and 

3°  yet,  unless  they  moved  upon  it  with  the  velocity  of  light 
cavalry,  there  was  little  chance  but  it  would  be  found 
preoccupied  by  the  Cossacks.  They,  it  is  true,  had 
suffered  greatly  in  the  recent  sanguinary  action  with  the 
defeated  ouloss;  but  the  excitement  of  victory,  and  the 


REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS.  35 

intense  sympathy  with  their  unexampled  triumph,  had 
again  swelled  their  ranks,  and  would  probably  act  with 
the  force  of  a  vortex  to  draw  in  their  simple  countrymen 
from  the  Caspian.  The  question,  therefore,  of  preoccu- 
pation was  reduced  to  a  race.  The  Cossacks  were  march-  5 
ing  upon  an  oblique  line  not  above  50  miles  longer  than 
that  which  led  to  the  same  point  from  the  Kalmuck 
headquarters  before  Koulagina  ;  and  therefore,  without 
the  most  furious  haste  on  the  part  of  the  Kalmucks,  there 
was  not  a  chance  for  them,  burdened  and  "trashed"1  as  10 
they  were,  to  anticipate  so  agile  a  light  cavalry  as  the 
Cossacks  in  seizing  this  important  pass. 

.Dreadful  were  the  feelings  of  the  poor  women  on  hear- 
ing this  exposition  of  the  case.  For  they  easily  under- 
stood that  too  capital  an  interest  (the  summa  reruni)  15 
was  now  at  stake  to  allow  of  any  regard  to  minor  inter- 
ests, or  what  would  be  considered  such  in  their  present 
circumstances.  The  dreadful  week  already  passed  — 
their  inauguration  in  misery  —  was  yet  fresh  in  their 
remembrance.  The  scars  of  suffering  were  impressed  20 
not  only  upon  their  memories,  but  upon  their  very  persons 
and  the  persons  of  their  children  ;  and  they  knew  that, 
where  no  speed  had  much  chance  of  meeting  the  cravings 
of  the  chieftains,  no  test  would  be  accepted,  short  of 
absolute  exhaustion,  that  as  much  had  been  accomplished  25 
as  could  be  accomplished.  Weseloff,  the  Russian  captive, 
has  recorded  the  silent  wretchedness  with  which  the 
women  and  elder  boys  assisted  in  drawing  the  tent  ropes. 
On  the  5th  of  January  all  had  been  animation  and  the 
joyousness  of  indefinite  expectation  ;  now,  on  the  con-  30 

1  "  Trashed."  This  is  an  expressive  word  used  by  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher  in  their  "  Bonduca,"  etc.,  to  describe  the  case  of  a  person 
retarded  or  embarrassed  in  flight,  or  in  pursuit,  by  some  encumbrance, 
whether  thing  or  person,  too  valuable  to  be  left  behind. 


36  REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS. 

trary,  a  brief  but  bitter  experience  had  taught  them  to 
take  an  amended  calculation  of  what  it  was  that  lay 
before  them. 

One  whole  day  and  far  into  the  succeeding  night  had 
5  the  renewed  flight  continued ;  the  sufferings  had  been 
greater  than  before,  for  the  cold  had  been  more  intense, 
and  many  perished  out  of  the  living  creatures  through 
every  class  except  only  the  camels  —  whose  powers  of 
endurance  seemed  equally  adapted  to  cold  and  heat. 

10  The  second  morning,  however,  brought  an  alleviation  to 
the  distress.  Snow  had  begun  to  fall ;  and,  though  not 
deep  at  present,  it  was  easily  foreseen  that  it  soon  would 
be  so,  and  that,  as  a  halt  would  in  that  case  become 
unavoidable,  no  plan  could  be  better  than  that  of  staying 

15  where  they  were,  especially  as  the  same  cause  would 
check  the  advance  of  the  Cossacks.  Here,  then,  was  the 
last  interval  of  comfort  which  gleamed  upon  the  unhappy 
nation  during  their  whole  migration.  For  ten  days  the 
snow  continued  to  fall  with  little  intermission.  At  the 

20  end  of  that  time,  keen,  bright,  frosty  weather  succeeded  ; 
the  drifting  had  ceased.  In  three  days  the  smooth  ex- 
panse became  firm  enough  to  support  the  treading  of  the 
camels ;  and  the  flight  was  recommenced.  But  during 
the  halt  much  domestic  comfort  had  been  enjoyed ;  and, 

25  for  the  last  time,  universal  plenty.  The  cows  and  oxen 
had  perished  in  such  vast  numbers  on  the  previous 
marches  that  an  order  was  now  issued  to  turn  what 
remained  to  account  by  slaughtering  the  whole,  and 
salting  whatever  part  should  be  found  to  exceed  the 

30  immediate  consumption.  This  measure  led  to  a  scene 
of  general  banqueting,  and  even  of  festivity  amongst  all 
who  were  not  incapacitated  for  joyous  emotions  by  dis- 
tress of  mind,  by  grief  for  the  unhappy  experience  of  the 
few  last  days,  and  by  anxiety  for  the  too  gloomy  future. 


REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS.  37 

Seventy  thousand  persons  of  all  ages  had  already  perished, 
exclusively  of  the  many  thousand  allies  who  had  been  cut 
down  by  the  Cossack  sabre.  And  the  losses  in  reversion 
were  likely  to  be  many  more.  For  rumors  began  now  to 
arrive  from  all  quarters,  by  the  mounted  couriers  whom  5 
the  Khan  had  dispatched  to  the  rear  and  to  each  flank  as 
well  as  in  advance,  that  large  masses  of  the  imperial  troops 
were  converging  from  all  parts  of  Central  Asia  to  the  fords 
of  the  River  Torgau,  as  the  most  convenient  point  for 
intercepting  the  flying  tribes ;  and  it  was  already  well  10 
known  that  a  powerful  division  was  close  in  their  rear, 
and  was  retarded  only  by  the  numerous  artillery  which 
had  been  judged  necessary  to  support  their  operations. 
New  motives  were  thus  daily  arising  for  quickening  the 
motions  of  the  wretched  Kalmucks,  and  for  exhausting  15 
those  who  were  previously  but  too  much  exhausted. 

It  was  not  until  the  zd  day  of  February  that  the 
Khan's  advanced  guard  came  in  sight  of  Ouchim,  the 
defile  among  the  hills  of  Moulgaldchares,  in  which  they 
anticipated  so  bloody  an  opposition  from  the  Cossacks.  20 
A  pretty  large  body  of  these  light  cavalry  had,  in  fact, 
preoccupied  the  pass  by  some  hours  ;  but  the  Khan, 
having  two  great  advantages  —  namely,  a  strong  body  of 
infantry,  who  had  been  conveyed  by  sections  of  five  on 
about  two  hundred  camels,  and  some  pieces  of  light  25 
artillery  which  he  had  not  yet  been  forced  to  abandon  — 
soon  began  to  make  a  serious  impression  upon  this 
unsupported  detachment ;  and  they  would  probably  at  any 
rate  have  retired ;  but,  at  the  very  moment  when  they 
were  making  some  dispositions  in  that  view,  Zebek-Dorchi  30 
appeared  upon  their  rear  with  a  body  of  trained  riflemen, 
who  had  distinguished  themselves  in  the  war  with  Turkey. 
These  men  had  contrived  to  crawl  unobserved  over  the 
cliffs  which  skirted  the  ravine,  availing  themselves  of  the 


38  REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS. 

dry  beds  of  the  summer  torrents  and  other  inequalities  of 
the  ground  to  conceal  their  movement.  Disorder  and 
trepidation  ensued  instantly  in  the  Cossack  files ;  the 
Khan,  who  had  been  waiting  with  the  elite  of  his  heavy 

5  cavalry,  charged  furiously  upon  them.  Total  overthrow 
followed  to  the  Cossacks,  and  a  slaughter  such  as  in  some 
measure  avenged  the  recent  bloody  extermination  of  their 
allies,  the  ancient  ouloss  of  Feka-Zechorr.  The  slight 
horses  of  the  Cossacks  were  unable  to  support  the  weight 

10  of  heavy  Polish  dragoons  and  a  body  of  trained  (amclc<:rs 
(that  is,  cuirassiers  mounted  on  camels) ;  hardy  they  were, 
but  not  strong,  nor  a  match  for  their  antagonists  in  weight ; 
and  their  extraordinary  efforts  through  the  last  few  days 
to  gain  their  present  position  had  greatly  diminished  their 

15  powers  for  effecting  an  escape.  Very  few,  in  fact,  did 
escape  ;  and  the  bloody  day  of  Ouchim  became  as  memo- 
rable among  the  Cossacks  as  that  which,  about  twenty 
days  before,  had  signalized  the  complete  annihilation  of 
the  Feka-Zechorr.1 

20  The  road  was  now  open  to  the  River  Igritch,  and  as  yet 
even  far  beyond  it  to  the  Torgau ;  but  how  long  this 
state  of  things  would  continue  was  every  day  more 

1  There  was  another  ouloss  equally  strong  with  that  of  Feka- 
Zechorr,  viz.  that  of  Erketunn  under  the  government  of  Assarcho 
and  Machi,  whom  some  obligations  of  treaty  or  other  hidden  motives 
drew  into  the  general  conspiracy  of  revolt.  But  fortunately  the  two 
chieftains  found  means  to  assure  the  Governor  of  Astrachan,  on  the 
first  outbreak  of  the  insurrection,  that  their  real  wishes  were  for 
maintaining  the  old  connection  with  Russia.  The  Cossacks,  there- 
fore, to  whom  the  pursuit  was  intrusted,  had  instructions  to  act 
cautiously  and  according. to  circumstances  on  coming  up  with  them. 
The  result  was,  through  the  prudent  management  of  Assarcho,  that 
the  clan,  without  compromising  their  pride  or  independence,  made 
such  moderate  submissions  as  satisfied  the  Cossacks ;  and  eventually 
both  chiefs  and  people  received  from  the  Czarina  the  rewards  and 
honors  of  exemplary  fidelity. 


REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS.  39 

doubtful.  Certain  intelligence  was  now  received  that  a 
large  Russian  army,  well  appointed  in  every  arm,  was 
advancing  upon  the  Torgau  under  the  command  of 
General  Traubenberg.  This  officer  was  to  be  joined  on 
his  route  by  ten  thousand  Bashkirs,  and  pretty  nearly  the  5 
same  amount  of  Kirghises  —  both  hereditary  enemies  of 
the  Kalmucks  —  both  exasperated  to  a  point  of  madness 
by  the  bloody  trophies  which  Oubacha  and  Momotbacha 
had,  in  late  years,  won  from  such  of  their  compatriots  as 
served  under  the  Sultan.  The  Czarina's  yoke  these  wild  10 
nations  bore  with  submissive  patience,  but  not  the  hands 
by  which  it  had  been  imposed  ;  and  accordingly,  catch- 
ing with  eagerness  at  the  present  occasion  offered  to  their 
vengeance,  they  sent  an  assurance  to  the  Czarina  of  their 
perfect  obedience  to  her  commands,  and  at  the  same  time  15 
a  message  significantly  declaring  in  what  spirit  they  meant 
to  execute  them  —  viz.  "  that  they  would  not  trouble  her 
Majesty  with  prisoners." 

Here  then  arose,  as  before  with  the  Cossacks,  a  race 
for  the  Kalmucks  with  the  regular  armies  of  Russia,  and  20 
concurrently  with  nations  as  fierce  and  semi-humanized 
as  themselves,  besides  that  they  were  stung  into  threefold 
activity  by  the  furies  of  mortified  pride  and  military 
abasement,  under  the  eyes  of  the  Turkish  Sultan.  The 
forces,  and  more  especially  the  artillery,  of  Russia. were  25 
far  too  overwhelming  to  permit  the  thought  of  a  regular 
opposition  in  pitched  battles,  even  with  a  less  dilapidated 
state  of  their  resources  than  they  could  reasonably  expect 
at  the  period  of  their  arrival  on  the  Torgau.  In  their 
speed  lay  their  only  hope  —  in  strength  of  foot,  as  before,  3° 
and  not  in  strength  of  arm.  Onward,  therefore,  the  Kal- 
mucks pressed,  marking  the  lines  of  their  wide-extending 
march  over  the  sad  solitudes  of  the  steppes  by  a  never- 
ending  chain  of  corpses.  The  old  and  the  young,  the 


40  REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS. 

sick  man  on  his  couch,  the  mother  with  her  baby — all 
were  left  behind.  Sights  such  as  these,  with  the  many 
rueful  aggravations  incident  to  the  helpless  condition  of 
infancy  —  of  disease  and  of  female  weakness  abandoned 

5  to  the  wolves  amidst  a  howling  wilderness  —  continued  to 
track  their  course  through  a  space  of  full  two  thousand 
miles ;  for  so  much  at  the  least  it  was  likely  to  prove, 
including  the  circuits  to  which  they  were  often  compelled 
by  rivers  or  hostile  tribes,  from  the  point  of  starting  on 

10  the  Wolga  until  they  could  reach  their  destined  halting 
ground  on  the  east  bank  of  the  Torgau.  For  the  first 
seven  weeks  of  this  march  their  sufferings  had  been  im- 
bittered  by  the  excessive  severity  of  the  cold  ;  and  every 
night  —  so  long  as  wood  was  to  be  had  for  fires,  either 

15  from  the  lading  of  the  camels,  or  from  the  desperate  sacri- 
fice of  their  baggage  wagons,  or  (as  occasionally  happened) 
from  the  forests  which  skirted  the  banks  of  the  many 
rivers  which  crossed  their  path  —  no  spectacle  was  more 
frequent  than  that  of  a  circle,  composed  of  men,  women, 

20  and  children,  gathered  by  hundreds  round  a  central  fire, 
all  dead  and  stiff  at  the  return  of  morning  light.  Myriads 
were  left  behind  from  pure  exhaustion,  of  whom  none 
had  a  chance,  under  the  combined  evils  which  beset 
them,  of  surviving  through  the  next  twenty-four  hours. 

25  Frost,  however,  and  snow  at  length  ceased  to  persecute  ; 
the  vast  extent  of  the  march  at  length  brought  them  into 
more  genial  latitudes,  and  the  unusual  duration  of  the 
march  was  gradually  bringing  them  into  more  genial 
seasons  of  the  year.  Two  thousand  miles  had  at  least 

30  been  traversed ;  February,  March,  April,  were  gone ;  the 
balmy  month  of  May  had  opened  ;  vernal  sights  and 
sounds  came  from  every  side  to  comfort  the  heart-weary 
travellers  ;  and  at  last,  in  the  latter  end  of  May,  crossing 
the  Torgau,  they  took  up  a  position  where  they  hoped  to 


KEl'OLT  OF   THE    TARTARS.  41 

find  liberty  to  repose  themselves  for  many  weeks  in  com- 
fort as  well  as  in  security,  and  to  draw  such  supplies  from 
the  fertile  neighborhood  as  might  restore  their  shattered 
forces  to  a  condition  for  executing,  with  less  of  wreck  and 
ruin,  the  large  remainder  of  the  journey.  5 

Yes ;  it  was  true  that  two  thousand  miles  of  wandering 
had   been    completed,   but   in    a   period   of   nearly  five 
months,  and  with  the  terrific  sacrifice  of  at  least  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  thousand  souls,  to  say  nothing  of  herds  and 
flocks  past  all  reckoning.     These  had  all  perished  :  ox,  10 
cow,  horse,  mule,  ass,  sheep,  or  goat,  not  one  survived  — 
only  the  camels.     These  arid  and  adust  creatures,  look- 
ing like  the  mummies  of  some  antediluvian  animals,  with- 
out the  affections  or  sensibilities  of  flesh  and  blood  — 
these  only  still  erected  their  speaking  eyes  to  the  eastern  15 
heavens,  and  had  to  all  appearance  come  out  from  this 
long  tempest  of  trial  unscathed  and  hardly  diminished. 
The    Khan,    knowing    how    much    he    was    individually 
answerable  for  the  misery  which   had  been  sustained, 
must  have  wept  tears  even  more  bitter  than  those  of  20 
Xerxes  when  he  threw  his  eyes  over  the  myriads  whom 
he    had    assembled :    for    the    tears    of    Xerxes   were 
unmingled  with  compunction.     Whatever  amends  were  in 
his  power,  the  Khan  resolved  to  make,  by  sacrifices  to 
the  general  good  of  all  personal  regards ;  and,  accordingly,  25 
even  at  this  point  of  their  advance,  he  once  more  delib- 
erately brought  under  review  the  whole  question  of  the 
revolt.     The  question  was  formally  debated  before  the 
Council,  whether,  even  at  this  point,  they  should  untread 
their  steps,  and,  throwing  themselves  upon  the  Czarina's  30 
mercy,    return    to    their   old    allegiance.     In    that   case, 
Oubacha  professed  himself  willing  to  become  the  scape- 
goat for  the  general  transgression.     This,  he  argued,  was 
no  fantastic  scheme,  but  even  easy  of  accomplishment ; 


42  REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS. 

for  the  unlimited  and  sacred  power  of  the  Khan,  so  well 
known  to  the  Empress,  made  it  absolutely  iniquitous  to 
attribute  any  separate  responsibility  to  the  people.  Upon 
the  Khan  rested  the  guilt  —  upon  the  Khan  would 
5  descend  the  imperial  vengeance.  This  proposal  was 
applauded  for  its  generosity,  but  was  energetically  op- 
posed by  Zebek-Dorchi.  Were  they  to  lose  the  whole 
journey  of  two  thousand  miles  ?  Was  their  misery  to 
perish  without  fruit  ?  True  it  was  that  they  had  yet 

10  reached  only  the  halfway  house ;    but,  in  that  respect, 
the   motives   were   evenly  balanced   for   retreat   or   for 
advance.      Either    way  they  would   have   pretty  nearly 
the  same  distance  to  traverse,  but  with  this  difference  — 
that,  forwards,  their  route    lay  through  lands  compara- 

15  lively  fertile  ;  backwards,  through  a  blasted  wilderness, 
rich  only  in  memorials  of  their  sorrow,  and  hideous  to 
Kalmuck  eyes  by  the  trophies  of  their  calamity.  Besides, 
though  the  Empress  might  accept  an  excuse  for  the  past, 
would  she  the  less  forbear  to  suspect  for  the  future  ? 

20  The  Czarina's  pardon  they  might  obtain,  but  could  they 
ever,  hope  to  recover  her  confidence ?  Doubtless  there 
would  now  be  a  standing  presumption  against  them,  an 
immortal  ground  of  jealousy ;  and  a  jealous  government 
would  be  but  another  name  for  a  harsh  one.  Finally, 

25  whatever  motives  there  ever  had  been  for  the  revolt 
surely  remained  unimpaired  by  anything  that  had  oc- 
curred. In  reality  the  revolt  was,  after  all,  no  revolt, 
but  (strictly  speaking)  a  return  to  their  old  allegiance  ; 
since,  not  above  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago  (viz.  in 

30  the  year  1616),  their  ancestors  had  revolted  from  the 
Emperor  of  China.  They  had  now  tried  both  govern- 
ments ;  and  for  them  China  was  the  land  of  promise,  and 
Russia  the  house  of  bondage. 

Spite,  however,  of  all  that  Zebek  could  say  or  do,  the 


REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS.  43 

yearning  of  the  people  was  strongly  in  behalf  of  the 
Khan's  proposal  ;  the  pardon  of  their  prince,  they  per- 
suaded themselves,  would  be  readily  conceded  by  the 
Empress  :  and  there  is  little  doubt  that  they  would  at 
this  time  have  thrown  themselves  gladly  upon  the  imperial  5 
mercy ;  when  suddenly  all  was  defeated  by  the  arrival  of 
two  envoys  from  Traubenberg.  This  general  had  reached 
the  fortress  of  Orsk,  after  a  very  painful  march,  on  the 
1 2th  of  April ;  thence  he  set  forward  toward  Oriembourg, 
which  he  reached  upon  the  ist  of  June,  having  been  10 
joined  on  his  route  at  various  times  through  the  month 
of  May  by  the  Kirghises  and  a  corps  of  ten  thousand 
Bashkirs.  From  Oriembourg  he  sent  forward  his  official 
offers  to  the  Khan,  which  were  harsh  and  peremptory, 
holding  out  no  specific  stipulations  as  to  pardon  or  15 
impunity,  an  exacting  unconditional  submission  as  the 
preliminary  price  of  any  cessation  from  military  opera- 
tions. The  personal  character  of  Traubenberg,  which 
was  anything  but  energetic,  and  the  condition  of  his 
army,  disorganized  in  a  great  measure  by  the  length  and  20 
severity  of  the  march,  made  it  probable  that,  with  a  little 
time  for  negotiation,  a  more  conciliatory  tone  would  have 
been  assumed.  But,  unhappily  for  all  parties,  sinister 
events  occurred  in  the  meantime  such  as  effectually  put 
an  end  to  every  hope  of  the  kind.  25 

The  two  envoys  sent  forward  by  Traubenberg  had 
reported  to  this  officer  that  a  distance  of  only  ten  days' 
march  lay  between  his  own  headquarters  and  those  of 
the  Khan.  Upon  this  fact  transpiring,  the  Kirghises,  by 
their  prince  Nourali,  and  the  Bashkirs,  entreated  the  30 
Russian  general  to  advance  without  delay.  Once  having 
placed  his  cannon  in  position,  so  as  to  command  the 
Kalmuck  camp,  the  fate  of  the  rebel  Khan  and  his 
people  would  be  in  his  own  hands,  and  they  would 


44  REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS. 

themselves  form  his  advanced  guard.  Traubenberg,  how- 
ever (why  has  not  been  certainly  explained),  refused  to 
march ;  grounding  his  refusal  upon  the  condition  of  his 
army  and  their  absolute  need  of  refreshment.  Long 
5  and  fierce  was  the  altercation ;  but  at  length,  seeing  no 
chance  of  prevailing,  and  dreading  above  all  other  events 
the  escape  of  their  detested  enemy,  the  ferocious  Bash- 
kirs went  off  in  a  body  by  forced  marches.  In  six  days 
they  reached  the  Torgau,  crossed  by  swimming  their 

10  horses,  and  fell  upon  the  Kalmucks,  who  were  dispersed 
for  many  a  league  in  search  of  food  or  provender  for 
their  camels.  The  first  day's  action  was  one  vast  suc- 
cession of  independent  skirmishes,  diffused  over  a  field 
of  thirty  to  forty  miles  in  extent ;  one  party  often  break- 

15  ing  up  into  three  or  four,  and  again  (according  to  the 
accidents  of  ground)  three  or  four  blending  into  one ; 
flight  and  pursuit,  rescue  and  total  overthrow,  going  on 
simultaneously,  under  all  varieties  of  form,  in  all  quarters 
of  the  plain.  The  Bashkirs  had  found  themselves  obliged, 

20  by  the  scattered  state  of  the  Kalmucks,  to  split  up  into 
innumerable  sections ;  and  thus,  for  some  hours,  it  had 
been  impossible  for  the  most  practised  eye  to  collect  the 
general  tendency  of  the  day's  fortune.  Both  the  Khan 
and  Zebek-Dorchi  were  at  one  moment  made  prisoners, 

25  and  more  than  once  in  imminent  danger  of  being  cut 
down ;  but  at  length  Zebek  succeeded  in  rallying  a 
strong  column  of  infantry,  which,  with  the  support  of  the 
camel  corps  on  each  flank,  compelled  the  Bashkirs  to 
retreat.  Clouds,  however,  of  these  wild  cavalry  continued 

3°  to  arrive  through  the  next  two  days  and  nights,  followed 
or  accompanied  by  the  Kirghises.  These  being  viewed 
as  the  advanced  parties  of  Traubenberg's  army,  the 
Kalmuck  chieftains  saw  no  hope  of  safety  but  in  flight; 
and  in  this  way  it  happened  that  a  retreat,  which  had  so 


REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS.  45 

recently  been  brought  to  a  pause,  was  resumed  at  the 
very  moment  when  the  unhappy  fugitives  were  anticipat- 
ing a  deep  repose,  without  further  molestation,  the  whole 
summer  through. 

It  seemed  as  though  every  variety  of  wretchedness    5 
were  predestined  to  the  Kalmucks,  and  as  if  their  suffer- 
ings were   incomplete   unless    they   were   rounded   and 
matured  by  all  that  the  most  dreadful  agencies  of  sum- 
mer's heat  could  superadd  to  those  of  frost  and  winter. 
To  this  sequel  of  their  story  we  shall  immediately  revert,  10 
after  first  noticing  a  little  romantic  episode  which  occurred 
at   this    point   between  Oubacha  and   his   unprincipled 
cousin,  Zebek-Dorchi. 

There  was,  at  the  time  of  the  Kalmuck  flight  from  the 
Wolga,  a  Russian  gentleman  of  some  rank  at  the  court  15 
of  the  Khan,  whom,  for  political  reasons,  it  was  thought 
necessary  to  carry  along  with  them  as  a  captive.  For 
some  weeks  his  confinement  had  been  very  strict,  and  in 
one  or  two  instances  cruel ;  but,  as  the  increasing  dis- 
tance was  continually  diminishing  the  chances  of  escape,  20 
and  perhaps,  also,  as  the  misery  of  the  guards  gradually 
withdrew  their  attention  from  all  minor  interests  to  their 
own  personal  sufferings,  the  vigilance  of  the  custody 
grew  more  and  more  relaxed ;  until  at  length,  upon  a 
petition  to  the  Khan,  Mr.  Weseloff  was  formally  restored  25 
to  liberty ;  and  it  was  understood  that  he  might  use  his 
liberty  in  whatever  way  he  chose ;  even  for  returning 
to  Russia,  if  that  should  be  his  wish.  Accordingly,  he 
was  making  active  preparations  for  his  journey  to  St. 
Petersburg,  when  it  occurred  to  Zebek-Dorchi  that  not  30 
improbably,  in  some  of  the  battles  which  were  then  antici- 
pated with  Traubenberg,  it  might  happen  to  them  to 
lose  some  prisoner  of  rank,  —  in  which  case  the  Russian 
Weseloff  would  be  a  pledge  in  their  hands  for  negotiating 


46  REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS. 

an  exchange.  Upon  this  plea,  to  his  own  severe  afflic- 
tion, the  Russian  was  detained  until  the  further  pleasure 
of  the  Khan.  The  Khan's  name,  indeed,  was  used 
through  the  whole  affair,  but,  as  it  seemed,  with  so  little 

5  concurrence  on  his  part,  that,  when  Weseloff  in  a  private 
audience  humbly  remonstrated  upon  the  injustice  done 
him  and  the  cruelty  of  thus  sporting  with  his  feelings  by 
setting  him  at  liberty,  and,  as  it  were,  tempting  him  into 
dreams  of  home  and  restored  happiness  only  for  the  pur- 

10  pose  of  blighting  them,  the  good-natured  prince  dis- 
claimed all  participation  in  the  affair,  and  went  so  far  in 
proving  his  sincerity  as  even  to  give  him  permission  to 
effect  his  escape ;  and,  as  a  ready  means  of  commencing 
it  without  raising  suspicion,  the  Khan  mentioned  to  Mr. 

15  Weseloff  that  he  had  just  then  received  a  message  from 
the  Hetman  of  the  Bashkirs,  soliciting  a  private  interview 
on  the  banks  of  the  Torgau  at  a  spot  pointed  out.  That 
interview  was  arranged  for  the  coming  night ;  and  Mr. 
Weseloff  might  go  in  the  Khan's  suite,  which  on  either 

20  side  was  not  to  exceed  three  persons.  Weseloff  was  a 
prudent  man,  acquainted  with  the  world,  and  he  read 
treachery  in  the  very  outline  of  this  scheme,  as  stated  by 
the  Khan  —  treachery  against  the  Khan's  person.  He 
mused  a  little,  and  then  communicated  so  much  of  his 

25  suspicions  to  the  Khan  as  might  put  him  on  his  guard  ; 
but,  upon  further  consideration,  he  begged  leave  to 
decline  the  honor  of  accompanying  the  Khan.  The  fact 
was  that  three  Kalmucks,  who  had  strong  motives  for 
returning  to  their  countrymen  on  the  west  bank  of  the 

30  Wolga,  guessing  the  intentions  of  Weseloff,  had  offered 
to  join  him  in  his  escape.  These  men  the  Khan  would 
probably  find  himself  obliged  to  countenance  in  their 
project,  so  that  it  became  a  point  of  honor  with  Weseloff 
to  conceal  their  intentions,  and  therefore  to  accomplish 


REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS.  47 

•> 

the  evasion  from  the  camp  (of  which  the  first  steps  only 
would  be  hazardous)  without  risking  the  notice  of  the 
Khan. 

The  district  in  which  they  were  now  encamped 
abounded  through  many  hundred  miles  with  wild  horses  5 
of  a  docile  and  beautiful  breed.  Each  of  the  four  fugi- 
tives had  caught  from  seven  to  ten  of  these  spirited 
creatures  in  the  course  of  the  last  few  days.  This 
raised  no  suspicion,  for  the  rest  of  the  Kalmucks  had 
been  making  the  same  sort  of  provision  against  the  com-  10 
ing  toils  of  their  remaining  route  to  China.  These  horses 
were  secured  by  halters,  and  hidden  about  dusk  in  the 
thickets  which  lined  the  margin  of  the  river.  To  these 
thickets,  about  ten  at  night,  the  four  fugitives  repaired. 
They  took  a  circuitous  path,  which  drew  them  as  little  as  15 
possible  within  danger  of  challenge  from  any  of  the  out- 
posts or  of  the  patrols  which  had  been  established  on  the 
quarters  where  the  Bashkirs  lay  ;  and  in  three-quarters  of 
an  hour  they  reached  the  rendezvous.  The  moon  had 
now  risen,  the  horses  were  unfastened  ;  and  they  were  20 
in  the  act  of  mounting,  when  the  deep  silence  of  the 
woods  was  disturbed  by  a  violent  uproar  and  the  clash- 
ing of  arms.  Weseloff  fancied  that  he  heard  the  voice  of 
the  Khan  shouting  for  assistance.  He  remembered  the 
communication  made  by  that  prince  in  the  morning  ;  and,  25 
requesting  his  companions  to  support  him,  he  rode  off  in 
the  direction  of  the  sound.  A  very  short  distance  brought 
him  to  an  open  glade  in  the  wood,  where  he  beheld  four 
men  contending  with  a  party  of  at  least  nine  or  ten. 
Two  of  the  four  were  dismounted  at  the  very  instant  of  30 
Weseloff's  arrival.  One  of  these  he  recognized  almost 
certainly  as  the  Khan,  who  was  fighting  hand  to  hand, 
but  at  great  disadvantage,  with  two  of  the  adverse  horse- 
men. Seeing  that  no  time  was  to  be  lost,  Weseloff  fired 


48  REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS. 

and  brought  down  one  of  the  two.  His  companions  dis- 
charged their  carabines  at  the  same  moment ;  and  then 
all  rushed  simultaneously  into  the  little  open  area.  The 
thundering  sound  of  about  thirty  horses,  all  rushing  at 

5  once  into  a  narrow  space,  gave  the  impression  that  a 
whole  troop  of  cavalry  was  coming  down  upon  the  assail- 
ants, who  accordingly  wheeled  about  and  fled  with  one 
impulse.  Weseloff  advanced  to  the  dismounted  cavalier, 
who,  as  he  expected,  proved  to  be  the  Khan.  The  man 

10  whom  Weseloff  had  shot  was  lying  dead ;  and  both  were 
shocked,  though  Weseloff  at  least  was  not  surprised,  on 
stooping  down  and  scrutinizing  his  features,  to  recog- 
nize a  well-known  confidential  servant  of  Zebek-Dorchi. 
Nothing  was  said  by  either  party.  The  Khan  rode  off, 

15  escorted  by  W'eseloff  and  his  companions;  and  for  some 
time  a  dead  silence  prevailed.  The  situation  of  Weseloff 
was  delicate  and  critical.  To  leave  the  Khan  at  this  point 
was  probably  to  cancel  their  recent  services  ;  for  he  might 
be  again  crossed  on  his  path,  and  again  attacked,  by  the 

20  very  party  from  whom  he  had  just  been  delivered.  Yet,  on 
the  other  hand,  to  return  to  the  camp  was  to  endanger  the 
chances  of  accomplishing  the  escape.  The  Khan,  also,  was 
apparently  revolving  all  this  in  his  mind  ;  for  at  length  he 
broke  silence  and  said:  "I  comprehend  your  situation; 

25  and,  under  other  circumstances,  I  might  feel  it  my  duty  to 
detain  your  companions,  but  it  would  ill  become  me  to  do 
so  after  the  important  service  you  have  just  rendered  me. 
Let  us  turn  a  little  to  the  left.  There,  where  you  see  the 
watch  fire,  is  an  outpost.  Attend  me  so  far.  I  am  then 

30  safe.  You  may  turn  and  pursue  your  enterprise  ;  for 
the  circumstances  under  which  you  will  appear  as  my 
escort  are  sufficient  to  shield  you  from  all  suspicion  for 
the  present.  I  regret  having  no  better  means  at  my  dis- 
posal for  testifying  my  gratitude.  But  tell  me  before  we 


REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS.  49 

part  —  was  it  accident  only  which  led  you  to  my  rescue  ? 
Or  had  you  acquired  any  knowledge  of  the  plot  by  which 
I  was  decoyed  into  this  snare  ?  "  Weseloff  answered  very 
candidly  that  mere  accident  had  brought  him  to  the  spot 
at  which  he  heard  the  uproar  ;  but  that,  having  heard  it,  5 
and  connecting  it  with  the  Khan's  communication  of  the 
morning,  he  had  then  designedly  gone  after  the  sound  in 
a  way  which  he  certainly  should  not  have  done,  at  so 
critical  a  moment,  unless  in  the  expectation  of  finding 
the  Khan  assaulted  by  assassins.  A  few  minutes  after  10 
they  reached  the  outpost  at  which  it  became  safe  to 
leave  the  Tartar  chieftain ;  and  immediately  the  four 
fugitives  commenced  a  flight  which  is,  perhaps,  without  a 
parallel  in  the  annals  of  travelling.  Each  of  them  led 
six  or  seven  horses  besides  the  one  he  rode;  and  by  15 
shifting  from  one  to  the  other  (like  the  ancient  Desultors 
of  the  Roman  circus),  so  as  never  to  burden  the  same 
horse  for  more  than  half  an  hour  at  a  time,  they  con- 
tinued to  advance  at  the  rate  of  200  miles  in  the  twenty- 
four  hours  for  three  days  consecutively.  After  that  time,  20 
considering  themselves  beyond  pursuit,  they  proceeded 
less  rapidly  ;  though  still  with  a  velocity  which  staggered 
the  belief  of  WeselofPs  friends  in  after  years.  He  was, 
however,  a  man  of  high  principle,  and  always  adhered 
firmly  to  the  details  of  his  printed  report.  One  of  the  25 
circumstances  there  stated  is  that  they  continued  to  pur- 
sue the  route  by  which  the  Kalmucks  had  fled,  never  for 
an  instant  finding  any  difficulty  in  tracing  it  by  the  skele- 
tons and  other  memorials  of  their  calamities.  In  par- 
ticular, he  mentions  vast  heaps  of  money  as  part  of  the  30 
valuable  property  which  it  had  been  necessary  to  sacri- 
fice. These  heaps  were  found  lying  still  untouched  in 
the  deserts.  From  these  Weseloff  and  his  companions 
took  as  much  as  they  could  conveniently  carry ;  and  this 


50  REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS. 

it  was,  with  the  price  of  their  beautiful  horses,  which  they 
afterward  sold  at  one  of  the  Russian  military  settlements 
for  about  ^15  apiece,  which  eventually  enabled  them  to 
pursue  their  journey  in  Russia.  This  journey,  as  regarded 
5  Weseloff  in  particular,  was  closed  by  a  tragical  catas- 
trophe. He  was  at  that  time  young  and  the  only  child 
of  a  doting  mother.  Her  affliction  under  the  violent  ab- 
duction of  her  son  had  been  excessive,  and  probably  had 
undermined  her  constitution.  Still  she  had  supported  it. 

10  Weseloff,  giving  way  to  the  natural  impulses  of  his  filial 
affection,  had  imprudently  posted  through  Russia  to  his 
mother's  house  without  warning  of  his  approach.  He 
rushed  precipitately  into  her  presence  ;  and  she,  who  had 
stood  the  shocks  of  sorrow,  was  found  unequal  to  the 

15  shock  of  joy  too  sudden  and  too  acute.  She  died  upon 
the  spot.  

We  now  revert  to  the  final  scenes  of  the  Kalmuck 
flight.  These  it  would  be  useless  to  pursue  circumstan- 
tially through  the  whole  two  thousand  miles  of  suffering 

20  which  remained ;  for  the  character  of  that  suffering  was 
even  more  monotonous  than  on  the  former  half  of  the 
flight,  but  also  more  severe.  Its  main  elements  were 
excessive  heat,  with  the  accompaniments  of  famine  and 
thirst,  but  aggravated  at  every  step  by  the  murderous 

25  attacks  of  their  cruel  enemies,  the  Bashkirs  and  the 
Kirghises. 

These  people,  "  more  fell  than  anguish,  hunger,  or 
the  sea,"  stuck  to  the  unhappy  Kalmucks  like  a  swarm 
of  enraged  hornets.  And  very  often,  while  they  were 

30  attacking  them  in  the  rear,  their  advanced  parties  and 
flanks  were  attacked  with  almost  equal  fury  by  the  people 
of  the  country  which  they  were  traversing  ;  and  with  good 
reason,  since  the  law  of  self-preservation  had  now  obliged 


REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS.  51 

the  fugitive  Tartars  to  plunder  provisions  and  to  forage 
wherever  they  passed.  In  this  respect  their  condition 
was  a  constant  oscillation  of  wretchedness ;  for  some- 
times, pressed  by  grinding  famine,  they  took  a  circuit  of 
perhaps  a  hundred  miles,  in  order  to  strike  into  a  land  5 
rich  in  the  comforts  of  life  ;  but  in  such  a  land  they  were 
sure  to  find  a  crowded  population,  of  which  every  arm 
was  raised  in  unrelenting  hostility,  with  all  the  advantages 
of  local  knowledge,  and  with  constant  preoccupation  of 
all  the  defensible  positions,  mountain  passes,  or  bridges.  10 
Sometimes,  again,  wearied  out  with  this  mode  of  suffer- 
ing, they  took  a  circuit  of  perhaps  a  hundred  miles,  in 
order  to  strike  into  a  land  with  few  or  no  inhabitants. 
But  in  such  a  land  they  were  sure  to  meet  absolute 
starvation.  Then,  again,  whether  with  or  without  this  15 
plague  of  starvation,  whether  with  or  without  this  plague 
of  hostility  in  front,  whatever  might  be  the  "  fierce  vari- 
eties "  of  their  misery  in  this  respect,  no  rest  ever  came 
to  their  unhappy  rear  ;  post  equitem  sedet  atra  cura:  it 
was  a  torment  like  the  undying  worm  of  conscience.  20 
And,  upon  the  whole,  it  presented  a  spectacle  altogether 
unprecedented  in  the  history  of  mankind.  Private  and 
personal  malignity  is  not  unfrequently  immortal ;  but  rare 
indeed  is  it  to  find  the  same  pertinacity  of  malice  in 
a  nation.  And  what  imbittered  the  interest  was  that  the  25 
malice  was  reciprocal.  Thus  far  the  parties  met  upon 
equal  terms  ;  but  that  equality  only  sharpened  the  sense 
of  their  dire  inequality  as  to  other  circumstances.  The 
Bashkirs  were  ready  to  fight  "from  morn  till  dewy  eve." 
The  Kalmucks,  on  the  contrary,  were  always  obliged  to  30 
run.  Was  it  from  their  enemies  as  creatures  whom  they 
feared  ?  No  ;  but  towards  their  friends  —  towards  that 
final  haven  of  China  —  as  what  was  hourly  implored  by 
the  prayers  of  their  wives  and  the  tears  of  their  children. 


52  REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS. 

But,  though  they  fled  unwillingly,  too  often  they  fled  in 
vain  —  being  unwillingly  recalled.  There  lay  the  tor- 
ment. Every  day  the  Bashkirs  fell  upon  them  ;  every 
day  the  same  unprofitable  battle  was  renewed ;  as  a 
5  matter  of  course,  the  Kalmucks  recalled  part  of  their 
advanced  guard  to  fight  them  ;  every  day  the  battle  raged 
for  hours,  and  uniformly  with  the  same  result.  For,  no 
sooner  did  the  Bashkirs  find  themselves  too  heavily 
pressed,  and  that  the  Kalmuck  march  had  been  retarded 

10  by  some  hours,  than  they  retired  into  the  boundless 
deserts,  where  all  pursuit  was  hopeless.  But  if  the  Kal- 
mucks resolved  to  press  forwards,  regardless  of  their  ene- 
mies—  in  that  case  their  attacks  became  so  fierce  and 
overwhelming  that  the  general  safety  seemed  likely  to  be 

15  brought  into  question  ;  nor  could  any  effectual  remedy 
be  applied  to  the  case,  even  for  each  separate  day,  ex- 
cept by  a  most  embarrassing  halt  and  by  countermarches 
that,  to  men  in  their  circumstances,  were  almost  worse 
than  death.  It  will  not  be  surprising  that  the  irritation 

20  of  such  a  systematic  persecution,  superadded  to  a  previ- 
ous and  hereditary  hatred,  and  accompanied  by  the 
stinging  consciousness  of  utter  impotence  as  regarded  all 
effectual  vengeance,  should  gradually  have  inflamed  the 
Kalmuck  animosity  into  the  wildest  expression  of  down- 

25  right  madness  and  frenzy.  Indeed,  long  before  the 
frontiers  of  China  were  approached,  the  hostility  of  both 
sides  had  assumed  the  appearance  much  more  of  a 
warfare  amongst  wild  beasts  than  amongst  creatures 
acknowledging  the  restraints  of  reason  or  the  claims  of  a 

30  common  nature.  The  spectacle  became  too  atrocious  ;  it 
was  that  of  a  host  of  lunatics  pursued  by  a  host  of  fiends. 


On  a  fine  morning  in  early  autumn  of  the  year  1771, 
Kien  Long,   the    Emperor  of  China,  was  pursuing    his 


REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS.  53 

amusements  in  a  wild  frontier  district  lying  on  the  out- 
side of  the  Great  Wall.  For  many  hundred  square 
leagues  the  country  was  desolate  of  inhabitants,  but  rich 
in  woods  of  ancient  growth,  and  overrun  with  game  of 
every  description.  In  a  central  spot  of  this  solitary  5 
region  the  Emperor  had  built  a  gorgeous  hunting  lodge, 
to  which  he  resorted  annually  for  recreation  and  relief 
from  the  cares  of  government.  Led  onwards  in  pursuit 
of  game,  he  had  rambled  to  a  distance  of  200  miles  or 
more  from  his  lodge,  followed  at  a  little  distance  by  a  10 
sufficient  military  escort,  and  every  night  pitching  his 
tent  in  a  different  situation,  until  at  length  he  had  arrived 
on  the  very  margin  of  the  vast  central  deserts  of  Asia.1 
Here  he  was  standing  by  accident,  at  an  opening  of  his 
pavilion,  enjoying  the  morning  sunshine,  when  suddenly  15 
to  the  westward  there  arose  a  vast,  cloudy  vapor,  which 
by  degrees  expanded,  mounted,  and  seemed  to  be  slowly 
diffusing  itself  over  the  whole  face  of  the  heavens.  By 
and  by  this  vast  sheet  of  mist  began  to  thicken  toward 
the  horizon  and  to  roll  forward  in  billowy  volumes.  The  20 
Emperor's  suite  assembled  from  all  quarters  ;  the  silver 
trumpets  were  sounded  in  the  rear  ;  and  from  all  the 
glades  and  forest  avenues  began  to  trot  forwards  towards 
the  pavilion  the  yagers  —  half  cavalry,  half  huntsmen  — 
who  composed  the  imperial  escort.  Conjecture  was  on  25 
the  stretch  to  divine  the  cause  of  this  phenomenon ;  and 
the  interest  continually  increased  in  proportion  as  simple 
curiosity  gradually  deepened  into  the  anxiety  of  uncertain 
danger.  At  first  it  had  been  imagined  that  some  vast 

1  All  the  circumstances  are  learned  from  a  long  state  paper  on  the 
subject  of  this  Kalmuck  migration  drawn  up  in  the  Chinese  language 
by  the  Emperor  himself.  Parts  of  this  paper  have  been  translated  by 
the  Jesuit  missionaries.  The  Emperor  states  the  whole  motives  of 
his  conduct  and  the  chief  incidents  at  great  length. 


54  REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS. 

troops  of  deer  or  other  wild  animals  of  the  chase  had 
been  disturbed  in  their  forest  haunts  by  the  Emperor's 
movements,  or  possibly  by  wild  beasts  prowling  for  prey, 
and  might  be  fetching  a  compass  by  way  of  re-entering 
5  the  forest  grounds  at  some  remoter  points,  secure  from 
molestation.  But  this  conjecture  was  dissipated  by  the 
slow  increase  of  the  cloud  and  the  steadiness  of  its 
motion.  In  the  course  of  two  hours  the  vast  phenome- 
non had  advanced  to  a  point  which  was  judged  to  be 

10  within  five  miles  of  the  spectators,  though  all  calcula- 
tions of  distance  were  difficult,  and  often  fallacious,  when 
applied  to  the  endless  expanses  of  the  Tartar  deserts. 
Through  the  next  hour,  during  which  the  gentle  morning 
breeze  had  a  little  freshened,  the  dusty  vapor  had  devel- 

15  oped  itself  far  and  wide  into  the  appearance  of  huge 
aerial  draperies,  hanging  in  mighty  volumes  from  the  sky 
to  the  earth  ;  and  at  particular  points,  where  the  eddies 
of  the  breeze  acted  upon  the  pendulous  skirts  of  these 
aerial  curtains,  rents  were  perceived,  sometimes  taking  the 

20  form  of  regular  arches,  portals,  and  windows,  through 
which  began  dimly  to  gleam  the  heads  of  camels  "  in- 
dorsed "  *  with  human  beings,  and  at  intervals  the  moving 
of  men  and  horses  in  tumultuous  array,  and  then  through 
other  openings,  or  vistas,  at  far-distant  points,  the  flash- 

25  ing  of  polished  arms.  But  sometimes,  as  the  wind  slack- 
ened or  died  away,  all  those  openings,  of  whatever  form, 
in  the  cloudy  pall,  would  slowly  close,  and  for  a  time  the 
whole  pageant  was  shut  up  from  view ;  although  the 
growing  din,  the  clamors,  the  shrieks,  and  groans  ascend- 

30  ing  from  infuriated  myriads,  reported,  in  a  language  not 
to  be  misunderstood,  what  was  going  on  behind  the 
cloudy  screen. 

1  Camels  "indorsed"   "and  elephants  indorsed  with  towers." — 
MILTON  in  Paradise  Regained, 


REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS.  55 

It  was,  in  fact,  the  Kalmuck  host,  now  in  the  last 
extremities  of  their  exhaustion,  and  very  fast  approaching 
to  that  final  stage  of  privation  and  killing  misery  beyond 
which  few  or  none  could  have  lived,  but  also,  happily  for 
themselves,  fast  approaching  (in  a  literal  sense)  that  final  5 
stage  of  their  long  pilgrimage  at  which  they  would  meet 
hospitality  on  a  scale  of  royal  magnificence  and  full  pro- 
tection from  their  enemies.  These  enemies,  however,  as 
yet,  still  were  hanging  on  their  rear  as  fiercely  as  ever, 
though  this  day  was  destined  to  be  the  last  of  their  hid-  10 
ecus  persecution.  The  Khan  had,  in  fact,  sent  forward 
couriers  with  all  the  requisite  statements  and  petitions, 
addressed  to  the  Emperor  of  China.  These  had  been 
duly  received,  and  preparations  made  in  consequence  to 
welcome  the  Kalmucks  with  the  most  paternal  benevo-  15 
lence.  But  as  these  couriers  had  been  dispatched  from 
the  Torgau  at  the  moment  of  arrival  thither,  and  before 
the  advance  of  Traubenberg  had  made  it  necessary 
for  the  Khan  to  order  a  hasty  renewal  of  the  flight,  the 
Emperor  had  not  looked  for  their  arrival  on  his  frontiers  20 
until  full  three  months  after  the  present  time.  The  Khan 
had,  indeed,  expressly  notified  his  intention  to  pass  the 
summer  heats  on  the  banks  of  the  Torgau,  and  to  recom- 
mence his  retreat  about  the  beginning  of  September.  The 
subsequent  change  of  plan  being  unknown  to  Kien  Long,  25 
left  him  for  some  time  in  doubt  as  to  the  true  interpreta- 
tion to  be  put  upon  this  mighty  apparition  in  the  desert : 
but  at  length  the  savage  clamors  of  hostile  fury  and 
clangor  of  weapons  unveiled  to  the  Emperor  the  true 
nature  of  those  unexpected  calamities  which  had  so  pre-  3° 
maturely  precipitated  the  Kalmuck  measure. 

Apprehending  the  real  state  of  affairs,  the  Emperor 
instantly  perceived  that  the  first  act  of  his  fatherly  care 
for  these  erring  children  (as  he  esteemed  them),  now 


56  REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS. 

returning  to  their  ancient  obedience,  must  be  —  to  deliver 
them  from  their  pursuers.  And  this  was  less  difficult 
than  might  have  been  supposed.  Not  many  miles  in  the 
rear  was  a  body  of  well-appointed  cavalry,  with  a  strong 
5  detachment  of  artillery,  who  always  attended  the  Em- 
peror's motions.  These  were  hastily  summoned.  Mean- 
time it  occurred  to  the  train  of  courtiers  that  some  danger 
might  arise  to  the  Emperor's  person  from  the  proximity 
of  a  lawless  enemy,  and  accordingly  he  was  induced  to 

10  retire  a  little  to  the  rear.  It  soon  appeared,  however,  to 
those  who  watched  the  vapory  shroud  in  the  desert,  that 
its  motion  was  not  such  as  would  argue  the  direction  of 
the  march  to  be  exactly  upon  the  pavilion,  but  rather  in 
a  diagonal  line,  making  an  angle  of  full  45  degrees  with 

15  that  line  in  which  the  imperial  cortege  had  been  standing, 
and  therefore  with  a  distance  continually  increasing. 
Those  who  knew  the  country  judged  that  the  Kalmucks 
were  making  for  a  large  fresh-water  lake  about  seven  or 
eight  miles  distant.  They  were  right ;  and  to  that  point 

20  the  imperial  cavalry  was  ordered  up  ;  and  it  was  precisely 
in  that  spot,  and  about  three  hours  after,  and  at  noonday 
on  the  8th  of  September,  that  the  great  Exodus  of  the 
Kalmuck  Tartars  was  brought  to  a  final  close,  and  with  a 
scene  of  such  memorable  and  hellish  fury  as  formed  an 

25  appropriate  winding  up  to  an  expedition  in  all  its  parts 
and  details  so  awfully  disastrous.  The  Emperor  was  not 
personally  present,  or  at  least  he  saw  whatever  he  ^ft/see 
from  too  great  a  distance  to  discriminate  its  individual 
features;  but  he  records  in  his  written  memorial  the 

30  report  made  to  him  of  this  scene  by  some  of  his  own 
officers. 

The  Lake  of  Tengis,  near  the  frightful  Desert  of  Kobi, 
lay  in  a  hollow  amongst  hills  of  a  moderate  height,  ranging 
generally  from  two  to  three  thousand  feet  high.  About 


REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS.  57 

eleven  o'clock  in  the  forenoon,  the  Chinese  cavalry 
reached  the  summit  of  a  road  which  led  through  a  cradle- 
like  dip  in  the  mountains  right  down  upon  the  margin  of 
the  lake.  From  this  pass,  elevated  about  two  thousand 
feet  above  the  level  of  the  water,  they  continued  to  5 
descend,  by  a  very  winding  and  difficult  road,  for  an  hour 
and  a  half  ;  and  during  the  whole  of  this  descent  they  were 
compelled  to  be  inactive  spectators  of  the  fiendish  spec- 
tacle below.  The  Kalmucks,  reduced  by  this  time  from 
about  six  hundred  thousand  souls  to  two  hundred  and  10 
sixty  thousand,  and  after  enduring  for  two  months  and  a 
half  the  miseries  we  have  previously  described — outra- 
geous heat,  famine,  and  the  destroying  scimiter  of  the 
Kirghises  and  the  Bashkirs  —  had  for  the  last  ten  days 
been  traversing  a  hideous  desert,  where  no  vestiges  were  15 
seen  of  vegetation,  and  no  drop  of  water  could  be  found. 
Camels  and  men  were  already  so  overladen  that  it  was  a 
mere  impossibility  that  they  should  carry  a  tolerable  suffi- 
ciency for  the  passage  of  this  frightful  wilderness.  On 
the  eighth  day  the  wretched  daily  allowance,  which  had  20 
been  continually  diminishing,  failed  entirely;  and  thus,  for 
two  days  of  insupportable  fatigue,  the  horrors  of  thirst 
had  been  carried  to  the  fiercest  extremity.  Upon  this 
last  morning,  at  the  sight  of  the  hills  and  the  forest 
scenery,  which  announced  to  those  who  acted  as  guides  25 
the  neighborhood  of  the  Lake  of  Tengis,  all  the  people 
rushed  along  with  maddening  eagerness  to  the  anticipated 
solace.  The  day  grew  hotter  and  hotter,  the  people  more 
and  more  exhausted  ;  and  gradually,  in  the  general  rush 
forward  -to  the  lake,  all  discipline  and  command  were  lost  30 

—  all  attempts  to  preserve  a  rear  guard  were  neglected 

—  the  wild  Bashkirs  rode  on  amongst  the  encumbered 
people  and  slaughtered  them  by  wholesale,  and  almost 
without  resistance.     Screams  and  tumultuous  shouts  pro- 


58  REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS. 

claimed  the  progress  of  the  massacre;  but  none  heeded  — 
none  halted ;  all  alike,  pauper  or  noble,  continued  to  rush 
on  with  maniacal  haste  to  the  waters  —  all  with  faces 
blackened  by  the  heat  preying  upon  the  liver  and  with 
5  tongue  drooping  from  the  mouth.  The  cruel  Bashkir  was 
affected  by  the  same  misery,  and  manifested  the  same 
symptoms  of  his  misery,  as  the  wretched  Kalmuck ;  the 
murderer  was  oftentimes  in  the  same  frantic  misery  as  his 
murdered  victim  —  many,  indeed  (an  ordinary  effect  of 

10  thirst),  in  both  nations  had  become  lunatic,  and  in  this 
state,  whilst  mere  multitude  and  condensation  of  bodies 
alone  opposed  any  check  to  the  destroying  scimiter  and 
the  trampling  hoof,  the  lake  was  reached ;  and  to  that 
the  whole  vast  body  of  enemies  rushed,  and  together 

15  continued  to  rush,  forgetful  of  all  things  at  that  moment 
but  of  one  almighty  instinct.  This  absorption  of  the 
thoughts  in  one  maddening  appetite  lasted  for  a  single 
half  hour ;  but  in  the  next  arose  the  final  scene  of  parting 
vengeance.  Far  and  wide  the  waters  of  the  solitary  lake 

20  were  instantly  dyed  red  with  blood  and  gore  :  here  rode  a 
party  of  savage  Bashkirs,  hewing  off  heads  as  fast  as  the 
swaths  fall  before  the  mower's  scythe  ;  there  stood  unarmed 
Kalmucks  in  a  death  grapple  with  their  detested  foes, 
both  up  to  the  middle  in  water,  and  oftentimes  both  sink- 

25  ing  together  below  the  surface,  from  weakness  or  from 
struggles,  and  perishing  in  each  other's  arms.  Did  the 
Bashkirs  at  any  point  collect  into  a  cluster  for  the  sake 
of  giving  impetus  to  the  assault  ?  Thither  were  the  camels 
driven  in  fiercely  by  those  who  rode  them,  generally 

3°  women  or  boys ;  and  even  these  quiet  creatures  were 
forced  into  a  share  in  this  carnival  of  murder  by  tram- 
pling down  as  many  as  they  could  strike  prostrate  with  the 
lash  of  their  fore-legs.  Every  moment  the  water  grew 
more  polluted ;  and  yet  every  moment  fresh  myriads  came 


REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS.  59 

up  to  the  lake  and  rushed  in,  not  able  to  resist  their 
frantic  thirst,  and  swallowing  large  draughts  of  water, 
visibly  contaminated  with  the  blood  of  their  slaughtered 
compatriots.  Wheresoever  the  lake  was  shallow  enough 
to  allow  of  men  raising  their  heads  above  the  water,  there,  5 
for  scores  of  acres,  were  to  be  seen  all  forms  of  ghastly 
fear,  of  agonizing  struggle,  of  spasm,  of  death,  and  the 
fear  of  death  —  revenge,  and  the  lunacy  of  revenge  — 
until  the  neutral  spectators,  of  whom  there  were  not  a 
few,  now  descending  the  eastern  side  of  the  lake,  at  length  10 
averted  their  eyes  in  horror.  This  horror,  which  seemed 
incapable  of  further  addition,  was,  however,  increased 
by  an  unexpected  incident.  The  Bashkirs,  beginning  to 
perceive  here  and  there  the  approach  of  the  Chinese 
cavalry,  felt  it  prudent — wheresoever  they  were  suffi-  15 
ciently  at  leisure  from  the  passions  of  the  murderous 
scene  —  to  gather  into  bodies.  This  was  noticed  by  the 
governor  of  a  small  Chinese  fort  built  upon  an  eminence 
above  the  lake  ;  and  immediately  he  threw  in  a  broadside, 
which  spread  havoc  among  the  Bashkir  tribe.  As  often  20 
as  the  Bashkirs  collected  into  globes  and  turms  as  their 
only  means  of  meeting  the  long  line  of  descending 
Chinese  cavalry,  so  often  did  the  Chinese  governor  of  the 
fort  pour  in  his  exterminating  broadside  ;  until  at  length 
the  lake,  at  its  lower  end,  became  one  vast  seething  25 
caldron  of  human  bloodshed  and  carnage.  The  Chinese 
cavalry  had  reached  the  foot  of  the  hills ;  the  Bashkirs, 
attentive  to  their  movements,  had  formed ;  skirmishes  had 
been  fought ;  and,  with  a  quick  sense  that  the  contest  was 
henceforward  rapidly  becoming  hopeless,  the  Bashkirs  3° 
and  Kirghises  began  to  retire.  The  pursuit  was  not  as 
vigorous  as  the  Kalmuck  hatred  would  have  desired. 
But,  at  the  same  time,  the  very  gloomiest  hatred  could 
not  but  find,  in  their  own  dreadful  experience  of  the 


60  REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS. 

Asiatic  deserts,  and  in  the  certainty  that  these  wretched 
Bashkirs  had  to  repeat  that  same  experience  a  second 
time,  for  thousands  of  miles,  as  the  price  exacted  by  a 
retributary  Providence  for  their  vindictive  cruelty  —  not 
5  the  very  gloomiest  of  the  Kalmucks,  or  the  least  reflecting, 
but  found  in  all  this  a  retaliatory  chastisement  more 
complete  and  absolute  than  any  which  their  swords  and 
lances  could  have  obtained  or  human  vengeance  could 
have  devised.  

10  Here  ends  the  tale  of  the  Kalmuck  wanderings  in  the 
Desert ;  for  any  subsequent  marches  which  awaited  them 
were  neither  long  nor  painful.  Every  possible  alleviation 
and  refreshment  for  their  exhausted  bodies  had  been 
already  provided  by  Kien  Long  with  the  most  princely 

15  munificence;  and  lands  of  great  fertility  were  immediately 
assigned  to  them  in  ample  extent  along  the  River  Ily,  not 
very  far  from  the  point  at  which  they  had  first  emerged 
from  the  wilderness  of  Kobi.  But  the  beneficent  attention 
of  the  Chinese  Emperor  may  be  best  stated  in  his  own 

20  words,  as  translated  into  French  by  one  of  the  Jesuit 
missionaries  :  "  La  nation  des  Torgotes  (savoir  les  Kal- 
muques)  arriva  a  Ily,  toute  delabre'e,  n'ayant  ni  de  quoi 
vivre,  ni  de  quoi  se  vetir.  Je  1'avais  prevu  ;  et  j'avais 
ordonne'  de  faire  en  tout  genre  les  provisions  ne'cessaires 

25  pour  pouvoir  les  secourir  promptement :  c'est  ce  qui  a  e'te' 
exe'cute.  On  a  fait  la  division  des  terres:  et  on  a  assigne 
a  chaque  famille  une  portion  suflfisante  pour  pouvoir  servir 
a  son  entretien,  soil  en  la  cultivant,  soit  en  y  nourissant 
desbestiaux.  On  a  donnd  a  chaque  particulier  dese'toffes 

30  pour  1'habiller,  des  grains  pour  se  nourrir  pendant  I'e'space 
d'une  annde,  des  ustensiles  pour  le  me'nage  et  d'autres 
choses  necessaires  :  et  outre  cela  plusieurs  onces  d'argent, 
pour  se  pourvoir  de  ce  qu'on  aurait  pu  oublier.  On  a 


REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS.  61 

designe  des  lieux  particuliers,  fertiles  en  paturages;  et  on 
leur  a  donne  des  boeufs,  moutons,  etc.,  pour  qu'ils  pussent 
dans  la  suite  travailler  par  eux-memes  a  leur  entretien  et 
a  leur  bien-etre." 

These  are  the  words  of  the  Emperor  himself,  speaking    5 
in  his  own  person  of  his  own  paternal  cares  ;  but  another 
Chinese,  treating  the  same  subject,  records  the  munifi- 
cence of  this  prince  in  terms  which  proclaim  still  more 
forcibly  the  disinterested  generosity  which  prompted,  and 
the  delicate  considerateness  which  conducted,  this  exten-  10 
sive  bounty.     He  has  been  speaking  of  the  Kalmucks, 
and  he  goes  on  thus  :  —  "  Lorsqu'ils  arriverent  sur  nos 
frontieres    (au   nombre  de  plusieurs  centaines  de  mille, 
quoique  la  fatigue  extreme,  la  faim,  la  soif,  et  toutes  les 
autres    incommodite's    inseparables  d'une  tres-longue   et  15 
tres-penible  route  en  eussent  fait  perir  presque  autant), 
ils  etaient  reduits  a  la  derniere  misere  ;  ils  manquaient 
de  tout.     II"  (viz.  1'empereur,  Kien  Long)  "leur  fit  pre- 
parer  des  logemens  conform.es  a  leur  maniere  de  vivre; 
il  leur  fit  distribuer  des  alimens  et  des  habits ;  il  leur  fit  20 
dormer  des  boeufs,  des  moutons,  et  des  ustensiles,  pour 
les  mettre  en  etat  de  former  des  troupeaux  et  de  cultiver 
la  terre,  et  tout  cela   a   ses  propres  frais,  qui   se   sont 
montes  a  des  sommes  immenses,  sans  compter  1'argent 
qu'il  a  donne'  a  chaque  chef-de-famille,  pour  pouvoir  a  la  25 
subsistance  de  sa  femme  et  de  ses  enfans." 

Thus,  after  their  memorable  year  of  misery,  the  Kal- 
mucks were  replaced  in  territorial  possessions,  and  in 
comfort  equal,  perhaps,  or  even  superior,  to  that  which 
they  had  enjoyed  in  Russia,  and  with  superior  political  3° 
advantages.  But,  if  equal  or  superior,  their  condition 
was  no  longer  the  same  ;  if  not  in  degree,  their  social 
prosperity  had  altered  in  quality ;  for,  instead  of  being  a 
purely  pastoral  and  vagrant  people,  they  were  now  in 


62  REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS. 

circumstances  which  obliged  them  to  become  essentially 
dependent  upon  agriculture ;  and  thus  far  raised  in  social 
rank  that,  by  the  natural  course  of  their  habits  and  the 
necessities  of  life,  they  were  effectually  reclaimed  from 

5  roving  and  from  the  savage  customs  connected  with  a  half 
nomadic  life.  They  gained  also  in  political  privileges, 
chiefly  through  the  immunity  from  military  service  which 
their  new  relations  enabled  them  to  obtain.  These  were 
circumstances  of  advantage  and  gain.  But  one  great 

10  disadvantage  there  was,  amply  to  overbalance  all  other 
possible  gain  :  the  chances  were  lost,  or  were  removed  to 
an  incalculable  distance,  for  their  conversion  to  Chris- 
tianity, without  which  in  these  times  there  is  no  absolute 
advance  possible  on  the  path  of  true  civilization. 

15  One  word  remains  to  be  said  upon  the  personal  interests 
concerned  in  this  great  drama.  The  catastrophe  in  this 
respect  was  remarkable  and  complete.  Oubacha,  with  all 
his  goodness  and  incapacity  of  suspecting,  had,  since  the 
mysterious  affair  on  the  banks  of  the  Torgau,  felt  his 

20  mind  alienated  from  his  cousin  ;  he  revolted  from  the  man 
that  would  have  murdered  him  ;  and  he  had  displayed  his 
caution  so  visibly  as  to  provoke  a  reaction  in  the  bearing 
of  Zebek-Dorchi  and  a  displeasure  which  all  his  dissimu- 
lation could  not  hide.  This  had  produced  a  feud,  which, 

25  by  keeping  them  aloof,  had  probably  saved  the  life  of 
Oubacha ;  for  the  friendship  of  Zebek-Dorchi  was  more 
fatal  than  his  open  enmity.  After  the  settlement  on  the 
Ily  this  feud  continued  to  advance,  until  it  came  under 
the  notice  of  the  Emperor,  on  occasion  of  a  visit  which 

30  all  the  Tartar  chieftains  made  to  his  Majesty  at  his  hunt- 
ing lodge  in  1772.  The  Emperor  informed  himself  accu- 
rately of  all  the  particulars  connected  with  the  transaction 
—  of  all  the  rights  and  claims  put  forward  —  and  of  the 
way  in  which  they  would  severally  affect  the  interests  of 


REVOLT  OF  THE    TARTARS.  63 

the  Kalmuck  people.  The  consequence  was  that  he 
adopted  the  cause  of  Oubacha,  and  repressed  the  pre- 
tensions of  Zebek-Dorchi,  who,  on  his  part,  so  deeply 
resented  this  discountenance  to  his  ambitious  projects 
that,  in  conjunction  with  other  chiefs,  he  had  the  presump-  5 
tion  even  to  weave  nets  of  treason  against  the  Emperor 
himself.  Plots  were  laid,  were  detected,  were  baffled; 
counter-plots  were  constructed  upon  the  same  basis, 
and  with  the  benefit  of  the  opportunities  thus  offered. 
Finally,  Zebek-Dorchi  was  invited  to  the  imperial  lodge,  10 
together  with  all  his  accomplices;  and,  under  the  skilful 
management  of  the  Chinese  nobles  in  the  Emperor's 
establishment,  the  murderous  artifices  of  these  Tartar 
chieftains  were  made  to  recoil  upon  themselves,  and  the 
whole  of  them  perished  by  assassination  at  a  great  im-  15 
perial  banquet.  For  the  Chinese  morality  is  exactly  of 
that  kind  which  approves  in  everything  the  lex  talionis  : 

"...  Lex  nee  justior  ulla  est  [as  they  think] 
Quam  necis  artifices  arte  perire  sua." 

So  perished  Zebek-Dorchi,  the  author  and  originator  of  20 
the  great  Tartar  Exodus.     Oubacha,  meantime,  and  his 
people  were  gradually  recovering  from  the  effects  of  their 
misery,  and  repairing  their  losses.    Peace  and  prosperity, 
under   the   gentle   rule   of    a   fatherly   lord   paramount, 
redawned  upon  the  tribes  :  their  household  lares,  after  so  25 
harsh  a  translation   to  distant  climates,  found  again  a 
happy  reinstatement   in  what   had,   in  fact,   been  their 
primitive  abodes :  they  found  themselves  settled  in  quiet 
sylvan  scenes,  rich  in  all  the  luxuries  of  life,  and  endowed 
with  the  perfect  loveliness  of  Arcadian  beauty.     But  from  30 
the  hills  of  this  favored  land,  and  even  from  the  level 
grounds  as  they  approach  its  western  border,  they  still 
look  out  upon  that  fearful  wilderness  which  once  beheld 


64       ,  REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS. 

a  nation  in  agony  —  the  utter  extirpation  of  nearly  half  a 
million  from  amongst  its  numbers,  and  for  the  remainder 
a  storm  of  misery  so  fierce  that  in  the  end  (as  happened 
also  at  Athens  during  the  Peloponnesian  war  from  a  dif- 
5  ferent  form  of  misery)  very  many  lost  their  memory ;  all 
records  of  their  past  life  were  wiped  out  as  with  a  sponge 
—  utterly  erased  and  cancelled:  and  many  others  lost 
their  reason ;  some  in  a  gentle  form  of  pensive  melan- 
choly, some  in  a  more  restless  form  of  feverish  delirium 

10  and  nervous  agitation,  and  others  in  the  fixed  forms  of 
tempestuous   mania,    raving   frenzy,    or   moping    idiocy. 
Two   great   commemorative   monuments   arose   in   after 
years  to  mark  the  depth  and  permanence  of  the  awe  — 
the  sacred  and  reverential  grief,  with  which  all  persons 

15  looked  back  upon  the  dread  calamities  attached  to  the 
year  of  the  tiger  —  all  who  had  either  personally  shared 
in  those  calamities  and  had  themselves  drunk  from  that 
cup  of  sorrow,  or  who  had  effectually  been  made  witnesses 
to  their  results  and  associated  with  their  relief  :  two  great 

20  monuments  ;  one  embodied  in  the  religious  solemnity, 
enjoined  by  the  Dalai-Lama,  called  in  the  Tartar  language 
a  Romanang — that  is,  a  national  commemoration,  with 
music  the  most  rich  and  solemn,  of  all  the  souls  who 
departed  to  the  rest  of  Paradise  from  the  afflictions  of  the 

25  Desert  (this  took  place  about  six  years  after  the  arrival 
in  China);  secondly,  another,  more  durable,  and  more 
commensurate  to  the  scale  of  the  calamity  and  to  the 
grandeur  of  this  national  Exodus,  in  the  mighty  columns 
of  granite  and  brass  erected  by  the  Emperor,  Kien  Long, 

30  near  the  banks  of  the  Ily.  These  columns  stand  upon 
the  very  margin  of  the  steppes,  and  they  bear  a  short  but 
emphatic  inscription  l  to  the  following  effect :  — 

1  This  inscription  has  been  slightly  altered  in  one  or  two  phrases, 
and  particularly  in  adapting  to  the  Christian  era  the  Emperor's 


REVOLT  OF   THE    TARTARS.  65 

By  the  Will  of  God, 
Here,  upon  the  Brink  of  these  Deserts, 
Which  from  this  point  begin  and  stretch  away, 

Pathless,  treeless,  waterless, 
For  thousands  of  miles,  and  along  the  margins  of  many  mighty         5 

Nations, 
Rested  from  their  labors  and  from  great  afflictions 

Under  the  shadow  of  the  Chinese  Wall, 

And  by  the  favor  of  KIEN  LONG,  God's  Lieutenant  upon  Earth, 
The  ancient  Children  of  the  Wilderness  —  the  Torgote  Tartars —      10 

Flying  before  the  wrath  of  the  Grecian  Czar, 
Wandering  Sheep  who  had  strayed  away  from  the  Celestial  Empire 

in  the  year  1616, 
But  are  now  mercifully  gathered  again,  after  infinite  sorrow, 

Into  the  fold  of  their  forgiving  Shepherd..  1 5 

Hallowed  be  the  spot  forever, 

and 

Hallowed  be  the  day —  September  8,  1771 ! 
Amen. 

expressions  for  the  year  of  the  original  Exodus  from  China  and  the 
retrogressive  Exodus  from  Russia.  With  respect  to  the  designation 
adopted  for  the  Russian  Emperor,  either  it  is  built  upon  some  con- 
fusion between  him  and  the  Byzantine  Caesars,  as  though  the  former, 
being  of  the  same  religion  with  the  latter  (and  occupying  in  part  the 
same  longitudes,  though  in  different  latitudes),  might  be  considered 
as  his  modern  successor ;  or  else  it  refers  simply  to  the  Greek  form 
of  Christianity  professed  by  the  Russian  Emperor  and  Church. 


NOTES. 


NOTES. 


THE   ORIGINAL   SOURCES. 

IN  Professor  Masson's  edition  of  De  Quincey,  Vol.  VII,  p.  8,  is  the 
following  discussion  of  the  author's  original  sources : 

"A  word  or  two  on  De  Quincey's  authorities  for  his  splendid  sketch 
called  The  Revolt  of  the  Tartars :  —  One  authority  was  a  famous 
Chinese  state-paper  purporting  to  have  been  composed  by  the  Chinese 
Emperor,  Kien  Long  himself  (1735-1796),  of  which  a  French  translation, 
with  the  title  Monument  de  la  Transmigration  des  Tourgouths  des  Sards 
de  la  Mer  Caspienne  dans  V Empire  de  la  Chine,  had  been  published  in 
1776  by  the  French  Jesuit  missionaries  of  Pekin,  in  the  first  volume  of 
their  great  collection  of  Mhnoires  concernant  les  Chinois.  The  account 
there  given  of  so  remarkable  an  event  of  recent  Asiatic  history  as  the 
migration  from  Russia  to  China  of  a  whole  population  of  Tartars  had 
so  much  interested  Gibbon  that  he  refers  to  it  in  that  chapter  of  his 
great  work  in  which  he  describes  the  ancient  Scythians.  De  Quincey 
had  fastened  on  the  same  document  as  supplying  him  with  an  admirable 
theme  for  literary  treatment.  Explaining  this  some  time  ago,  while 
editing  his  Revolt  of  the  Tartars  for  a  set  of  Selections  from  his  Writ- 
ings, I  had  to  add  that  there  was  much  in  the  paper  which  he  could  not 
have  derived  from  that  original,  and  that,  therefore,  unless  he  invented 
a  great  deal,  he  must  have  had  other  authorities  at  hand.  I  failed  at 
the  time  to  discover  what  these  other  authorities  were,  —  De  Quincey 
having  had  a  habit  of  secretiveness  in  such  matters  ;  but  since  then  an 
incidental  reference  of  his  own,  in  his  Homer  and  the  Homerida^  has 
given  me  the  clue.  The  author  from  whom  he  chiefly  drew  such  of  his 
materials  as  were  not  supplied  by  the  French  edition  of  Kien  Long's 
narrative,  was,  it  appears  from  that  reference,  the  German  traveller, 
Benjamin  Bergmann,  whose  Nomadische  Streifereien  unter  den  Kalmuken 
in  den  Jahren  1802  und  i8oj  came  forth  from  a  Riga  press,  in  four 
parts  or  volumes,  in  1804-1805.  The  book  consists  of  a  series  of  letters 

1  "  Some  years  ago  I  published  a  paper  on  the  Flight  of  the  Kalmuck  Tartars  from 
Russia.  Bergmann,  the  German  from  whom  that  account  was  chiefly  drawn,  resided 
a  long  time  among  the  Kalmucks,"  etc.  —  *issay  on  Homer  and  the  Homeridee. 


68  NOTES. 

written  by  Bergmann  from  different  places  during  his  residence  among 
the  Tartars,  with  interjected  essays  or  dissertations  of  an  independent 
kind  on  subjects  relating  to  the  Tartars,  — one  of  these  occupying  106 
pages,  and  entitled  Versuck  zur  Geschichte  der  Kalmiikenfiucht  von  der 
Wolga  ("  Essay  on  the  History  of  the  Flight  of  the  Kalmucks  from  the 
Volga ").  A  French  translation  of  the  Letters,  with  this  particular 
Essay  included,  appeared  in  1825  under  the  title  Voyage  de  Benjamin 
Bergniann  chez  les  Kalmiiks :  Traduit  de  FAllemand  par  M.  Moris, 
Membre  de  la  Societt  Asiatique.  Both  works  are  now  very  scarce ;  but 
having  seen  copies  of  both  (the  only  copies,  I  think,  in  Edinburgh,  and 
possibly  the  very  copies  which  De  Quincey  used),  I  have  no  doubt  left 
that  it  was  Bergmann's  Essay  of  1804  that  supplied  De  Quincey  with 
the  facts,  names,  and  hints  he  needed  for  filling  up  that  outline-sketch 
of  the  history  of  the  Tartar  Transmigration  of  1771  which  was  already 
accessible  for  him  in  the  Narrative  of  the  Chinese  Emperor,  Kien  Long, 
and  in  other  Chinese  State  Papers,  as  these  had  been  published  in  trans- 
lation, in  1776,  by  the  French  Jesuit  missionaries.  At  the  same  time, 
no  doubt  is  left  that  he  passed  the  composite  material  freely  and  boldly 
through  his  own  imagination,  on  the  principle  that  here  was  a  theme  of 
such  unusual  literary  capabilities  that  it  was  a  pity  it  should  be  left  in 
the  pages  of  ordinary  historiographic  summary  or  record,  inasmuch  as 
it  would  be  most  effectively  treated,  even  for  the  purpose  of  real  his- 
tory, if  thrown  into  the  form  of  an  epic  or  romance.  Accordingly  he 
takes  liberties  with  his  authorities,  deviating  from  them  now  and  then, 
and  even  once  or  twice  introducing  incidents  not  reconcilable  with 
either  of  them,  if  not  irreconcilable  also  with  historical  and  geographi- 
cal possibility.  Hence  one  may  doubt  sometimes  whether  what  one  is 
reading  is  to  be  regarded  as  history  or  as  invention.  On  this  point  I 
can  but  repeat  words  I  have  already  used :  as  it  is,  we  are  bound  to  be 
thankful.  In  quest  of  a  literary  theme,  De  Quincey  was  arrested  some- 
how by  that  extraordinary  transmigration  of  a  Kalmuck  horde  across 
the  face  of  Asia  in  1771,  which  had  also  struck  Gibbon;  he  inserted 
his  hands  into  the  vague  chaos  of  Asiatic  inconceivability  enshrouding 
the  transaction ;  and  he  tore  out  the  connected  and  tolerably  conceivable 
story  which  we  now  read.  There  is  no  such  vivid  version  of  any  such 
historical  episode  in  all  Gibbon,  and  possibly  nothing  truer  essentially, 
after  all,  to  the  substance  of  the  facts  as  they  actually  happened." 

Professor  Masson's  Appended  Editorial  Note  on  the  Chinese 
Accounts  of  the  Migration  (Vol.  VII,  pp.  422-6) : 

"  As  has  been  mentioned  in  the  Preface,  these  appeared,  in  translated 
form,  in  1776,  in  Vol.  I  of  the  great  collection  of  Afimoires  concernant 


NOTES.  69 

les  Chinois,  published  at  Paris  by  the  enterprise  of  the  French  Jesuit 
missionaries  at  Pekin.  The  most  important  of  them,  under  the  title 
Monument  de  la  Transmigration  des  Tourgouths  des  Bords  de  la  Mer 
Caspienne  dans  r Empire  de  la  Chine,  occupies  twenty-seven  pages  of 
the  volume,  and  purports  to  be  a  translation  of  a  Chinese  document 
drawn  up  by  the  Emperor  Kien  Long  himself.  This  Emperor,  described 
by  the  missionaries  as  '  the  best-lettered  man  in  his  Empire,'  had 
special  reasons  for  so  commemorating,  as  one  of  the  most  interesting 
events  of  his  reign,  the  sudden  self-transference  in  1771  of  so  large  a 
Tartar  horde  from  the  Russian  allegiance  to  his  own.  Much  of  the 
previous  part  of  his  reign  had  been  spent  in  that  work  of  conquering 
and  consolidating  the  Tartar  appendages  of  his  Empire  which  had  been 
begun  by  his  celebrated  grandfather,  the  Emperor  Kang  Hi  (1661-1721) ; 
and  it  so  chanced  that  the  particular  Tartar  horde  which  now,  in  1771, 
had  marched  all  the  way  from  the  shores  of  the  Caspian  to  appeal  to 
him  for  protection  and  for  annexation  to  the  Chinese  Empire  were  but 
the  posterity  of  a  horde  who  had  formerly  belonged  to  that  Empire,  but 
had  detached  themselves  from  it,  in  the  reign  of  Kang  Hi,  by  a  contrary 
march  westward  to  annex  themselves  to  the  Russian  dominions.  The 
event  of  1771,  therefore,  was  gratifying  to  Kien  Long  as  completing  his 
independent  exertions  among  the  Tartars  on  the  fringes  of  China  by 
the  voluntary  re-settlement  within  those  fringes,  and  return  to  the 
Chinese  allegiance,  of  a  whole  Tartar  population  which  had  been  astray, 
and  under  unfit  and  alien  rule,  for  several  generations.  With  this 
explanation  the  following  sentences  from  Kien  Long's  Memoir,  con- 
taining all  its  historical  substance,  will  be  fully  intelligible : 

" '  All  those  who  at  present  compose  the  nation  of  the  Torgouths, 
unaff righted  by  the  dangers  of  a  long  and  painful  march,  and  full  of  the 
single  desire  of  procuring  themselves  for  the  future  a  better  mode  of 
life  and  a  more  happy  lot,  have  abandoned  the  parts  which  they  inhab- 
ited far  beyond  our  frontiers,  have  traversed  with  a  courage  proof 
against  all  difficulties  a  space  of  more  than  ten  thousand  lys,  and  are 
come  to  range  themselves  in  the  number  of  my  subjects.  Their  sub- 
mission, in  my  view  of  it,  is  not  a  submission  to  which  they  have  been 
inspired  by  fear,  but  is  a  voluntary  and  free  submission,  if  ever  there 
was  one.  .  .  .  The  Torgouths  are  one  of  the  branches  of  the  Eleuths. 
Four  different  branches  of  people  formed  at  one  time  the  whole  nation 
of  the  Tchong-kar.  It  would  be  difficult  to  explain  their  common 
origin,  respecting  which  indeed  there  is  no  very  certain  knowledge. 
These  four  branches  separated  from  each  other,  so  that  each  became  a 
nation  apart.  That  of  the  Eleuths,  the  chief  of  them  all,  gradually 


70  NOTES. 

subdued  the  others,  and  continued  till  the  time  of  Kang  Hi  to  exercise 
this  usurped  pre-eminence  over  them.  Tse-ouang-raptan  then  reigned 
over  the  Eleuths,  and  Ayouki  over  the  Torgouths.  These  two  chiefs, 
being  on  bad  terms  with  each  other,  had  their  mutual  contests  ;  of  which 
Ayouki,  who  was  the  weaker,  feared  that  in  the  end  he  would  be  the 
unhappy  victim.  He  formed  the  project  of  withdrawing  himself  forever 
from  the  domination  of  the  Eleuths.  He  took  secret  measures  for 
securing  the  flight  which  he  meditated,  and  sought  safety,  with  all  his 
people,  in  the  territories  which  are  under  the  dominion  of  the  Russians. 
These  permitted  them  to  establish  themselves  in  the  country  of  Etchil 
[the  country  between  the  Volga  and  the  Jaik,  a  little  to  the  north  of 
the  Caspian  Sea].  .  .  .  Oubache,  the  present  Khan  of  the  Torgouths, 
is  the  youngest  grandson  of  Ayouki.  The  Russians  never  ceasing  to 
require  him  to  furnish  soldiers  for  incorporation  into  their  armies,  and 
having  at  last  carried  off  his  own  son  to  serve  them  as  a  hostage,  and 
being  besides  of  a  religion  different  from  his,  and  paying  no  respect  to 
that  of  the  Lamas,  which  the  Torgouths  profess,  Oubache  and  his 
people  at  last  determined  to  shake  off  a  yoke  which  was  becoming  daily 
more  and  more  insupportable.  After  having  secretly  deliberated  among 
themselves,  they  concluded  that  they  must  abandon  a  residence  where 
they  had  so  much  to  suffer,  in  order  to  come  and  live  more  at  ease  in 
those  parts  of  the  dominion  of  China  where  the  religion  professed  is 
that  of  Fo.  At  the  commencement  of  the  eleventh  month  of  last  year 
[December,  1770]  they  took  the  road,  with  their  wives,  their  children, 
and  all  their  baggage,  traversed  the  country  of  the  Hasaks  [Cossacks], 
skirted  Lake  Palkache-nor  and  the  adjacent  deserts;  and,  about  the 
end  of  the  sixth  month  of  this  year  [in  August,  1771],  after  having 
passed  over  more  than  ten  thousand  lys  during  the  space  of  the  eight 
whole  months  of  their  journey,  they  arrived  at  last  on  the  frontiers  of 
Charapen,  not  far  from  the  borders  of  Ily.  I  knew  already  that  the 
Torgouths  were  on  the  march  to  come  and  make  submission  to  me. 
The  news  was  brought  me  not  long  after  their  departure  from  Etchil. 
I  then  reflected  that,  as  Ileton,  general  of  the  troops  that  are  at  Ily, 
was  already  charged  with  other  very  important  affairs,  it  was  to  be 
feared  that  he  would  not  be  able  to  regulate  with  all  the  requisite  atten- 
tion those  which  concerned  these  new  refugees.  Chouhede",  one  of  the 
councillors  of  the  general,  was  at  Ouche,  charged  with  keeping  order 
among  the  Mahometans  there.  As  he  found  it  within  his  power  to 
give  his  attention  to  the  Torgouths,  I  ordered  him  to  repair  to  Ily  and 
do  his  best  for  their  solid  settlement.  ...  At  the  same  time  I  did  not 
neglect  any  of  the  precautions  that  seemed  to  me  necessary,  i  ordered 


NOTES.  71 

Chouhede  to  raise  small  forts  and  redoubts  at  the  most  important 
points,  and  to  cause  all  the  passes  to  be  carefully  guarded;  and  I 
enjoined  on  him  the  duty  of  himself  getting  ready  the  necessary  pro- 
visions of  every  kind  inside  these  defences.  .  .  .  The  Torgouths 
arrived,  and  on  arriving  found  lodgings  ready,  means  of  sustenance,  and 
all  the  conveniences  they  could  have  found  in  their  own  proper  dwell- 
ings. This  is  not  all.  Those  principal  men  among  them  who  had  to 
come  personally  to  do  me  homage  had  their  expenses  paid,  and  were 
honorably  conducted,  by  the  imperial  post-road,  to  the  place  where  I 
then  was.  I  saw  them ;  I  spoke  to  them  ;  I  invited  them  to  partake 
with  me  in  the  pleasures  of  the  chase  ;  and,  at  the  end  of  the  number 
of  days  appointed  for  this  exercise,  they  attended  me  in  my  retinue  as 
far  as  to  Ge-hol.  There  I  gave  them  a  ceremonial  banquet  and  made 
them  the  customary  presents.  ...  It  was  at  this  Ge-hol,  in  those 
charming  parts  where  Kang  Hi,  my  grandfather,  made  himself  an  abode 
to  which  he  could  retire  during  the  hot  season,  at  the  same  time  that 
he  thus  put  himself  in  a  situation  to  be  able  to  watch  with  greater  care 
over  the  welfare  of  the  peoples  that  are  beyond  the  western  frontiers  of 
the  Empire ;  it  was,  I  say,  in  those  lovely  parts  that,  after  having  con- 
quered the  whole  country  of  the  Eleuths,  I  had  received  the  sincere 
homages  of  Tchering  and  his  Tourbeths,  who  alone  among  the  Eleuths 
had  remained  faithful  to  me.  One  has  not  to  go  many  years  back  to 
touch  the  epoch  of  that  transaction.  The  remembrance  of  it  is  yet 
recent.  And  now — who  could  have  predicted  it?  —  when  there  was 
the  least  possible  room  for  expecting  such  a  thing,  and  when  I  had 
no  thought  of  it,  that  one  of  the  branches  of  the  Eleuths  which  first 
separated  itself  from  the  trunk,  those  Torgouths  who  had  voluntarily 
expatriated  themselves  to  go  and  live  under  a  foreign  and  distant 
dominion,  these  same  Torgouths  are  come  of  themselves  to  submit 
to  me  of  their  own  good  will ;  and  it  happens  that  it  is  still  at  Ge-hol, 
not  far  from  the  venerable  spot  where  my  grandfather's  ashes  repose, 
that  I  have  the  opportunity,  which  I  never  sought,  of  admitting  them 
solemnly  into  the  number  of  my  subjects.' 

"  Annexed  to  this  general  memoir  there  were  some  notes,  also  by  the 
Emperor,  one  of  them  being  that  description  of  the  sufferings  of  the 
Torgouths  on  their  march,  and  of  the  miserable  condition  in  which  they 
arrived  at  the  Chinese  frontier,  which  De  Quincey  has  quoted  at  p.  417. 
Annexed  to  the  Memoir  there  is  also  a  letter  from  P.  Amiot,  one 
of  the  French  Jesuit  missionaries,  dated  '  Pe-king,  I5th  October,  1773,' 
containing  a  comment  on  the  memoir  of  a  certain  Chinese  scholar  and 
mandarin,  Yu-min-tchoung,  who  had  been  charged  by  the  Emperor  with 


72  NOTES. 

the  task  of  seeing  the  narrative  properly  preserved  in  four  languages  in 
a  monumental  form.  It  is  from  this  Chinese  comment  on  the  Imperial 
Memoir  that  there  is  the  extract  at  p.  418  as  to  the  miserable  con- 
dition of  the  fugitives. 

"  On  a  comparison  of  De  Quincey's  splendid  paper  with  the  Chinese 
documents,  several  discrepancies  present  themselves ;  the  most  impor- 
tant of  which  perhaps  are  these  :  —  (i)  In  De  Quincey's  paper  it  is  Kien 
Long  himself  who  first  descries  the  approach  of  the  vast  Kalmuck 
horde  to  the  frontiers  of  his  dominions.  On  a  fine  morning  in  the 
early  autumn  of  1771,  we  are  told,  being  then  on  a  hunting  expedition 
in  the  solitary  Tartar  wilds  on  the  outside  of  the  great  Chinese  \Vall, 
and  standing  by  chance  at  an  opening  of  his  pavilion  to  enjoy  the 
morning  sunshine,  he  sees  the  huge  sheet  of  mist  on  the  horizon,  which, 
as  it  rolls  nearer  and  nearer,  and  its  features  become  more  definite, 
reveals  camels,  and  horses,  and  human  beings  in  myriads,  and  announces 
the  advent  of,  etc.  etc. !  In  Kien  Long's  own  narrative  he  is  not  there 
at  all,  having  expected  indeed  the  arrival  of  the  Kalmuck  host,  but 
having  deputed  the  military  and  commissariat  arrangements  for  the 
reception  of  them  to  his  trusted  officer,  Chouhede" ;  and  his  first  sight 
of  any  of  them  is  when  their  chiefs  are  brought  to  him,  by  the  imperial 
post-road,  to  his  quarters  a  good  way  off,  where  they  are  honorably 
entertained,  and  whence  they  accompany  him  to  his  summer  residence 
of  Ge-hol.  (2)  De  Quincey's  closing  account  of  the  monument  in 
memory  of  the  Tartar  transmigration  which  Kien  Long  caused  to  be 
erected,  and  his  copy  of  the  fine  inscription  on  the  monument,  are  not 
in  accord  with  the  Chinese  statements  respecting  that  matter.  '  Mighty 
columns  of  granite  and  brass  erected  by  the  Emperor  Kien  Long  near 
the  banks  of  the  Ily '  is  De  Quincey's  description  of  the  monument. 
The  account  given  of  the  affair  by  the  mandarin  Yu-min-tchoung,  in  his 
comment  on  the  Emperor's  Memoir,  is  very  different.  '  The  year  of 
the  arrival  of  the  Torgouths,'  he  says,  '  chanced  to  be  precisely  that  in 
which  the  Emperor  was  celebrating  the  eightieth  year  of  the  age  of 
his  mother  the  Empress-Dowager.  In  memory  of  this  happy  day 
his  Majesty  had  built  on  the  mountain  which  shelters  from  the  heat 
(Pi-chou-chan)  a  vast  and  magnificent  miao,  in  honor  of  the  reunion  of 
all  the  followers  of  Fo  in  one  and  the  same  worship ;  it  had  just  been 
completed  when  Oubache  and  the  other  princes  of  his  nation  arrived  at 
Ge-hol.  In  memory  of  an  event  which  has  contributed  to  make  this 
same  year  forever  famous  in  our  annals,  it  has  been  his  Majesty's  will 
to  erect  in  the  same  miao  a  monument  which  should  fix  the  epoch  of  the 
event  and  attest  its  authenticity  ;  he  himself  composed  the  words  for 


NOTES.  73 

the  monument  and  wrote  the  characters  with  his  own  hand.  How 
small  the  number  of  persons  that  will  have  an  opportunity  of  seeing 
and  reading  this  monument  within  the  walls  of  the  temple  in  which  it 
is  erected  ! '  Moreover  the  words  of  the  monumental  inscription  in 
De  Quincey's  copy  of  it  are  hardly  what  Kien  Long  would  have  written 
or  could  have  authorized.  '  Wandering  sheep  who  have  strayed  away 
from  the  Celestial  Empire  in  the  year  1616'  is  the  expression  in  De 
Quincey's  copy  for  that  original  secession  of  the  Torgouth  Tartars  from 
their  eastern  home  on  the  Chinese  borders  for  transference  of  them- 
selves far  west  to  Russia,  which  was  repaired  and  compensated  by  their 
return  in  1771  under  their  Khan  Oubache.  As  distinctly,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  memoir  of  Kien  Long  refers  the  date  of  the  original  secession 
to  no  farther  back  than  the  reign  of  his  own  grandfather,  the  Emperor 
Kang  Hi,  when  Ayouki,  the  grandfather  of  Oubache,  was  Khan  of  the 
Torgouths,  and  induced  them  to  part  company  with  their  overbearing 
kinsmen  the  Eleuths,  and  seek  refuge  within  the  Russian  territories  on 
the  Volga.  In  the  comment  of  the  Chinese  mandarin  on  the  Imperial 
Memoir  the  time  is  more  exactly  indicated  by  the  statement  that  the 
Torgouths  had  remained  '  more  than  seventy  years '  in  their  Russian 
settlements  when  Oubache  brought  them  back.  This  would  refer  us  to 
about  1700,  or,  at  farthest,  to  between  1690  and  1700,  for  the  secession 
under  Ayouki. 

"  The  discrepancies  are  partly  explained  by  the  fact  that  De  Quincey 
followed  Bergmann's  account,  —  which  account  differs  avowedly  in 
some  particulars  from  that  of  the  Chinese  memoirs.  In  Bergmann  I 
find  the  original  secession  of  the  ancestors  of  Oubache's  Kalmuck 
horde  from  China  to  Russia  is  pushed  back  to  1616,  just  as  in  De 
Quincey.  But,  though  De  Quincey  keeps  by  Bergmann  when  he 
pleases,  he  takes  liberties  with  Bergmann  too,  intensifies  Bergmann's 
story  throughout,  and  adds  much  to  it  for  which  there  is  little  or  no 
suggestion  in  Bergmann.  For  example,  the  incident  which  De  Quincey 
introduces  with  such  terrific  effect  as  the  closing  catastrophe  of  the 
march  of  the  fugitive  Kalmucks  before  their  arrival  on  the  Chinese 
frontier,  —  the  incident  of  their  thirst-maddened  rush  into  the  waters  of 
Lake  Tengis,  and  their  wallow  there  in  bloody  struggle  with  their 
Bashkir  pursuers,  —  has  no  basis  in  Bergmann  larger  than  a  few  slight 
and  rather  matter-of-fact  sentences.  As  Bergmann  himself  refers  here 
and  there  in  his  narrative  to  previous  books,  German  or  Russian,  for 
his  authorities,  it  is  just  possible  that  De  Quincey  may  have  called  some 
of  these  to  his  aid  for  any  intensification  or  expansion  of  Bergmann 
he  thought  necessary.  My  impression,  however,  is  that  he  did  nothing 


74  NOTES. 

of   the  sort,  but  deputed   any  necessary  increment  of   his   Bergmann 
materials  to  his  own  lively  imagination." 

1  i.  The  first  three  paragraphs  of  the  essay,  comprising  the  formal 
introduction,  are  intentionally  rather  more  picturesque  and  vivacious  in 
style  than  the  ordinary  narrative  that  follows.  If  these  paragraphs  be 
read  consecutively  aloud,  the  student  will  surely  feel  the  sweep  and 
power  of  De  Quincey's  eloquence.  Attention  may  well  be  directed  to 
the  author's  own  apparent  interest  in  his  subject  because  of  its  appeal 
to  the  imagination  (p.  I,  1.  4),  of  the  romantic  circumstances  (p.  1,1.  ll), 
of  its  dramatic  capabilities  (p.  2, 1.  8),  of  its  scenical  situations  (p.  3,  1.  8). 
Throughout  the  essay  effort  should  be  made  to  excite  appreciation  of 
the  significance  of  words,  and  De  Quincey's  mastery  in  the  use  of  words 
may  be  continually  illustrated.  In  paragraph  i,  note  the  fitness  of  the 
word  •velocity  (1.  12)  and  the  appropriateness  of  the  epithets  in  almighty 
instincts  (1.  17),  life-withering  marches  (1.  18),  gloomy  vengeance  (1.  19), 
volleying  thunders  (p.  2,  1.  i). 

1  5.  Tartar.  Originally  applied  to  certain  tribes  in  Chinese  Tartary, 
but  here  used  for  Mongolian.  Look  up  etymology  and  trace  relation 
of  the  word  to  Turk.  —  steppes.  A  Russian  word  indicating  large 
areas  more  or  less  level  and  devoid  of  forests  ;  these  regions  are  often 
similar  in  character  to  the  American  prairie,  and  are  used  for  pasturage. 

1  6,7.  terminus  a  quo,  terminus  ad  quern.  The  use  of  phrases  quoted 
from  classic  sources  is  frequent  in  De  Quincey's  writings.  Note  such 
phrases  as  they  occur,  also  foreign  words.  Is  their  use  to  be  justified  ? 

1  18.  leeming.  The  lemming,  or  leming.  A  rodent  quadruped. 
"  It  is  very  prolific,  and  vast  hordes  periodically  migrate  down  to  the 
sea,  destroying  much  vegetation  in  their  path." —  Century  Dictionary. 

1  22.     Miltonic  images.     "  Miltonic "   here   characterizes   not   only 
images   used  by  Milton,  but  images  suggestive  of  his  as  well.     Yet 

compare : 

Or  from  above 

Should  intermitted  vengeance  arm  again 
His  red  right  hand  to  plague  us  ? 

—  Paradise  Lost,  II,  172-4. 
Or,  with  solitary  hand 
Reaching  beyond  all  limit,  at  one  blow 
Unaided  could  have  finished  thee. 

—  Paradise  Lett,  VI,  139-41. 

2  12.     sanctions.     The  word  here  means  not  permission,  nor  recog- 
nition merely,  but  the  avowal  of  something  as  sacred,  hence  obligatory ; 
a  thing  ordained. 


NOTES.  75 

2  13, 14.  a  triple  character.  De  Quincey  is  fond  of  thus  analyzing 
the  facts  he  has  to  state.  Notice  how  this  method  of  statement, 
marked  by  "  ist,"  "  2dly,"  "3dly,"  contributes  to  the  clearness  of  the 
paragraph. 

2  17.  "  Venice  Preserved."  A  tragedy  by  Thomas  Otway,  one  of 
the  Elizabethan  dramatists  (1682).  —  "Fiesco."  A  tragedy  by  the 
great  German  dramatist  Friedrich  Schiller  (1783),  the  full  title  of  which 
is  The  Conspiracy  of  Fiesco  at  Genoa. 

2  22.  Cambyses,  the  Third  (529-522  B.C.).  He  was  king  of  Persia 
and  led  an  expedition  into  Ethiopia,  which  ended  disastrously  for 
him. 

2  23.  anabasis.  The  word  itself  means  "  a  march  up "  into  the 
interior.  —  katabasis  (1.  28)  means  "a  march  down,"  —  in  this  case 
the  retreat  of  the  Greeks.  The  Anabasis  of  the  Greek  historian  Xeno- 
phon  is  the  account  of  the  expedition  of  Cyrus  the  Younger  against 
Artaxerxes,  which  ended  with  the  death  of  Cyrus  at  the  battle  of  Cunaxa 
(401  B.C.). 

2  25.  Crassus.  A  Roman  general  who  led  an  army  into  Parthia 
(or  Persia)  (54  B.C.).  He  was  defeated  and  put  to  death  by  torture. — 
Julian  (1.  26),  the  Apostate,  lost  his  life  while  invading  Persia  (363  A.D.). 

2  28.    the  Russian  anabasis,  etc.     The  historic  invasion  of  Russia 
by  the  armies  of  Napoleon  in  1812,  followed  by  the  terrible  retreat  from 
Moscow. 

3  3.     This  triple  character,  etc.     Note  this  method  of  making  clear 
the  connection  between  paragraphs.     Make  close  study  of  these  para- 
graphs ;  analyze  their  structure.     Compare  the  manner  of  introducing 
subsequent  paragraphs. 

3  14.  Wolga.  The  German  spelling.  The  Volga  is  the  longest 
river  in  Europe.  It  is  difficult  to  locate  with  certainty  all  the  points 
here  mentioned. 

3  16.  Koulagina  was  a  fort  somewhere  on  the  Ural  river;  perhaps 
to  be  identified  with  Kulaschinskaja,  or  Kologinskaia. 

3  17.  Cossacks.  A  people  of  mixed  origin,  but  of  Russian  rather 
than  Tartar  stock.  There  are  two  branches,  the  Ukraine  and  the  Don 
Cossacks.  This  people  is  first  heard  of  in  the  tenth  century.  The  title 
of  the  leader  was  Hetman  ;  the  office  was  elective  and  the  government 
was  democratic.  The  Cossacks  have  been  noted  always  as  fierce 
fighters  and  are  valuable  subjects  of  the  czar.  The  Bashkirs  (1.  18)  are 
Mongolians  and  nomadic  in  their  habits. 

3  18.  Ouchim  was  evidently  a  mountain  pass  in  the  Ural  range 
(compare  p.  37,  1.  18). 


76  NOTES. 

3  19.  Torgau,  spelled  also  Torgai  by  De  Quincey,  though  elsewhere 
Turgai,  indicates  a  district  east  of  the  Ural  mountains  ;  it  is  also  the 
name  of  the  principal  city  of  that  district. 

3  20.     Khan.     A  Tartar  title  meaning  chief  or  governor. 

3  22.  Lake  of  Tengis.  Lake  Balkash  is  meant.  Compare  p.  56, 
1.  1 8,  and  note  thereon. 

3  23.  Zebek-Dorchi.  One  of  the  principal  characters  in  the  follow- 
ing narrative. 

3  32.     Kalmucks.     A  branch  of  the  Mongolian  family  of  peoples, 
divided  into  four  tribes,  and  dwelling  in  the  Chinese  Empire,  western 
Siberia,  and  southeastern  Russia.     They  were  nomads,  adherents  of  a 
form  of  Buddhism,  and  number  over  200,000.  —  Century  Cyclopedia  of 
Names. 

4  12.    exasperated.     As  an  illustration  of  the  discriminating  use  of 
words,  explain  the  difference  in  meaning  of  exasperated  and  irritated 
(1.  19)  ;  also  point  out  the  fitness  of  the  word  inflated  in  the  phrase 

(1-  13)- 

5  23.     rival.     V?hy"a!most  a  competitor"?     What  is  the  meaning 
of  each  word  ? 

5  32.     odius.     Is  there  any  gain  in  force  by  adding  repulsive  ? 

6  5.     Machiavelian.     Destitute  of  political  morality.    A  term  derived 
from  the  name  of  Niccolo  Machiavelli,  an  Italian  statesman  and  writer 
(1469-1527),  who,  in  a  treatise  on  government  entitled  "The  Prince," 
advocated,  or  was  interpreted  to  advocate,  the  disregard  of  moral  prin- 
ciple in  the  maintenance  of  authority.     In  this  sentence  discriminate 
between  the  apparent  synonyms  dissimulation,  hypocrisy,  perfidy. 

6  is.  Elizabeth  Petrowna.  Daughter  of  Peter  the  Great  and 
Catharine  I.  Empress  of  Russia  1741-1762. 

6  28.     Tcherkask.     An  important  city  of   the  Cossacks,   near   the 
mouth  of  the  Don.  —  tents.     A  common  method  of  counting  families 
among  nomads.     What  figure  of  speech  does  this  illustrate? 

7  25.     roubles.     A  rouble  is  the  Russian  unit  of  value,  worth  seventy- 
seven  cents.   The  word  is  etymologically  connected  with  the  Indian  rupee. 

7  28.     Thus  far,   etc.     Notice    the   care   with   which    De   Quincey 
analyzes  the  situation. 

8  19.    mercenary.     Look  up  origin  of  the  word.     How  is  it  appro- 
priate here  ? 

8  29.  romantic.  What  are  the  qualities  indicated  by  this  adjective? 
How  did  the  word,  derived  from  Roman,  get  its  present  significance  ? 

8  34.  A  triple  vengeance.  Compare  with  the  similar  analysis 
p.  2,  1.  13. 


NOTES.  77 

9  11.  behemoth.  A  Hebrew  word  meaning  "great  beast."  It  was 
used  probably  of  the  hippopotamus.  See  Job,  xl,  1 5-24.  In  the  work 
by  Bergmann,  which  furnished  De  Quincey  with  much  of  his  material, 
the  figure  used  is  that  of  a  giant  and  a  dwarf.  —  Muscovy.  An  old 
name  of  Russia,  derived  from  Moscow. 

9  13.     "lion  ramp."     Quoted  from  Milton  : 

The  bold  Ascalonite 
Fled  from  his  lion  ramp. 

—  Samson  Agonistes,  139. 

"  Baptized  and  infidel "  and  "  barbaric  East "  are  also  borrowings  from 
Milton. 

9  16.  unnumbered  numbers.  Notice  how  effectively  in  this  and  the 
following  sentences  De  Quincey  utilizes  suggested  words:  monstrous, 
monstrosity  ;  hopelessness,  hope. 

9  22.     fable.     Here  used  for  plot ;  the  idea  being  that  the  story  of 
the  Revolt  has  all  the  compactness  and  unity  of  design  to  be  found  in 
the  plot  of  a  classic  tragedy,  which  could  admit  the  introduction  of  no 
external   incidents  or   episodes   to   confuse   the   thread   of   the   main 
action. 

10  8.    translation.     Note  the  etymology  of  this  word,  which  is  here 
used  in  its  literal  sense. 

10  17.  But  what,  etc.  See  with  what  art,  as  well  as  with  what 
evident  interest,  De  Quincey  catches  the  very  spirit  of  the  plot.  How 
does  the  interrogation  add  strength  ? 

10  25,  26.  Kien  Long.  "  Emperor  of  China  from  1735  to  1796,  was 
the  fourth  Chinese  emperor  of  the  Mantchoo-Tartar  dynasty,  and  a  man 
of  the  highest  reputation  for  ability  and  accomplishment." — MASSON. 

10  28.  religion.  Lamaism.  "  A  corrupted  form  of  Buddhism  pre- 
vailing in  Tibet  and  Mongolia,  which  combines  the  ethical  and  meta- 
physical ideas  of  Buddhism  with  an  organized  hierarchy  under  two 
semi-political  sovereign  pontiffs,  an  elaborate  ritual,  and  the  worship  of 
a  host  of  deities  and  saints."  —  Century  Dictionary. 

10  29.     Chinese   Wall.     This   famous   wall    was   built  for  defence 
against  the  northern  Mongols  in  the  third  century.     It  is  1400  miles  in 
length  and   of   varying   height.     In   what   sense   is   the   phrase   used 
figuratively  ? 

11  17.     great  Lama.     "  Lama,  a  celibate  priest  or  ecclesiastic  belong- 
ing to  that  variety  of  Buddhism  known  as  Lamaism.     There  are  several 
grades  of  lamas,  both  male  and  female.     The  dalai-lama  and  the  tesho- 
or  bogdo-lama  are  regarded  as  supreme  pontiffs.     They  are  of  equal 


78  NOTES. 

authority  in  their  respective  territories,  but  the  former  is  much  the  more 
important,  and  is  known  to  Europeans  as  the  Grand  Lama."  —  Century 
Dictionary. 

The  Dalai- Lama  (p.  12,  1.  n)  resides  at  Lassa  in  Tibet. 

12  34.    With  respect  to  the  month.     Notice  the  extreme  care  with 
which  the  author  develops  the  following  details,  and  the  touch  of  sym- 
pathy with  which  this  paragraph  closes. 

13  28.     war  raged.     "The  war  was  begun  in  1768  when  Mustapha 
III.  was  Sultan  of  Turkey  ;  and  it  was  continued  till  1774." —  MASSON. 

13  33.  Human  experience,  etc.  It  is  a  favorite  device  of  this  writer 
to  develop  a  concrete  fact  into  an  abstraction  of  general  application. 
Do  you  believe  that  this  is  true  ?  Can  you  give  any  illustration  ? 

15  l.  a  pitched  battle.  "  It  will  be  difficult,  I  think,  to  find  record, 
in  the  history  of  the  Russo-Turkish  war  of  1768,  of  any  battle  answering 
to  this."  —  MASSON. 

15  10.  Paladins.  A  term  used  especially  to  designate  the  famous 
knightly  champions  who  served  the  Prankish  Charlemagne.  Look  up 
the  etymology  of  the  word  and  trace  its  present  meaning. 

15  24.     ukase.     "  An  edict  or   order,  legislative  or  administrative, 
emanating  from  the  Russian  government."  —  Century  Dictionary. 

16  9.     mummeries.     Find  the  original  meaning  of  this  word. 

16  22.     Catharine  II      "Elizabeth  had  been  succeeded  in   1762  by 
her  nephew  Peter  III.,  who  had  reigned  but  a  few  months  when  he  was 
dethroned  by  a  conspiracy  of  Russian  nobles  headed  by  his  German 
wife  Catharine.     She  became  Empress  in  his  stead,  and  reigned  from 
1762  to  1796  as  Catharine  II." —  MASSON. 

17  10.    doubtful  suspicion  and  indirect  presumption.     Note  the 
additional  force  given  to  the  nouns  by  the  adjectives. 

17  18.  Weseloff .  This  gentleman  is  referred  to  again  at  more  length 
in  pages  45-50. 

17  31.     sanctions.     Compare  the  note  on  p.  2,  1.  12.     The  SCUM  in 
which  the  word  is  used  justifies  the  use  of  -violate  in  the  next  line. 

18  24.     first  of  all.     Again  see  how,  by  use  of  this  phrase,  followed 
later  by  secondly,  thirdly,  etc.,  De  Quincey  gains  greater  clearness  for 
his  various  points. 

19  29.     But  the  time,  etc.     Here  is  the  first  general  division  point  in 
the  main  narrative.     The  genesis  of  the  plot  has  been  described ;  now 
follow  the  active  preliminaries  to  the  flight. 

19  33.    one  vast  conflagration.     Compare  the  account,  p.  25. 

20  12,  13.     But  where  or  how,  etc.     Note  again  the  effective  use  of 
interrogation.     How  does  it  stimulate  interest  ? 


NOTES.  79 

20  17.  Kirghises.  The  spelling  Kirghiz  is  more  familiar.  Like  the 
Bashkirs,  nomads  of  the  Mongolian-Tartar  race,  perhaps  the  least 
civilized  of  those  inhabiting  the  steppes. 

20  26.     rhetoric.     In  what  sense  used  here?     Is  this  use  correct? 

21  5.     Sarepta.     Locate  this  town  ;  it  is  on  a  small  river  that  empties 
into  the  Volga.     "  The  point  of  the  reference  to  this  particular  town  is 
that  it  was  a  colony  of  industrious  Germans,  having  been  founded  in 
1764  or  1765  by  the  Moravian  Brothers."  —  BALDWIN. 

22n.     Temba.     The  Jemba. 

22  28.     Kichinskoi.     Notice  the  vividness  of  the  character  portrait 
that  follows ;  compare  it  with  the  portraitures  of  Zebek  and  Oubacha 
previously  given. 

23  l.     surveillant.     Here  used  for  watchman  or  spy.     What  deriva- 
tives have  we  from  this  French  expression  ? 

23  34.     Christmas  arrived.     Another  division  point  in  the  analysis. 

24  5.     Astrachan.     Also  spelled  Astrakhan.     The  name  of  a  large 
and  somewhat  barren  district  comprising  more  than  90,000  square  miles 
of  territory  in  southeastern  Europe ;  its  capital  city,  having  the  same 
name,  is  situated  on  the  Volga  near  its  mouth. 

24  26.    at  the  rate  of  300  miles  a  day.     By  no  means  an  incredible 
speed  ;   in  Russia  such  sledge  flights   are  not   uncommon.     Compare 
what  De  Quincey  has  to  say  of  the  glory  of  motion  in    The  English 
Mail-Coach,  —  "  running  at  the  least  twelve  miles  an  hour." 

25  26.     malignant   counsels.     What  is  the  full  effect  of  this  epithet  ? 

26  10.    valedictory    vengeance.       Note    again    the    force    of    the 
epithet. 

26  28.  aggravate.  What  is  the  literal  significance  of  this  word  ? 
As  synonymous  with  what  words  is  it  often  incorrectly  used  ? 

28  11.  For  now  began  to  unroll.  Does  this  paragraph  constitute 
a  digression,  or  is  it  a  useful  amplification  of  the  narrative  ?  Does 
De  Quincey  exaggerate  when  he  terms  these  experiences  of  the  Tartars 
"  the  most  awful  series  of  calamities  anywhere  recorded  "  ? 

28  14.  sudden  inroads.  "  The  inroads  of  the  Huns  into  Europe 
extended  from  the  third  century  into  the  fifth  ;  those  of  the  Avars  from 
the  sixth  century  to  the  eighth  or  ninth  ;  the  first  great  conquests  of  the 
Mongol  Tartars  were  by  Genghis-Khan,  the  founder  of  a  Mongol 
empire  which  stretched,  in  the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth  century,  from 
China  to  Poland."  —  MASSON. 

28  18.  volleying  lightning.  Compare  p.  2,  1.  i,  where  De  Quincey 
uses  a  somewhat  similar  phrase.  Why  is  the  phrase  varied,  do  you 
suppose  ? 


80  NOTES. 

28  21.  the  French  retreat.  It  would  be  interesting  to  compare  the 
incidents  and  figures  of  this  retreat,  as  furnished  by  biographers  and 
historians.  Sloane's  Life  of  Napoleon  is  a  recent  authority. 

28  26.     vials  of  wrath.     Compare  Revelation,  xv,  7,  and  xvi,  i.     If 
De  Quincey  had  used  the  Revised  Version  he  would  have  written  bowls 
instead  of  vials.     Such  borrowings  of  phrase   or   incident  are  called 
"  allusions."    Make  a  list  of  the  scriptural  allusions  found  in  the  essay, 
—  of  those  suggested  by  Milton. 

29  16.     Earthquakes.     "  De  Quincey  here  refers  to  such  destructive 
shocks  as  that  which  occurred  at  Sparta,  464  B.C.,  in  which,  according 
to  Thirl  wall,  20,000  persons  perished ;   that  which  Gibbon  speaks  of 
during  the  reign  of  Valentinian,  365  A.D.,  in  which  50,000  persons  lost 
their  lives  at  Alexandria  alone  ;  that  in  the  reign  of  Justinian,  526  A.D., 
in   which   250,000  persons   were  crushed   by  falling  walls  ;  others  in 
Jamaica,  1692  A.D.  ;  at  Lisbon,  1755  A<r>->  w"^tn  l°ss  °^  3o>°oo  lives  ;  and 
in  Venezuela,  1812  A.D.,  when  Caraccas  was  destroyed,  and  20,000  souls 
perished."  —  WAUCHOPE. 

29  20.  pestilence.  Described  by  Thucydides;  see  also  Grote's 
History  of  Greece,  Chap.  XLIX.  Of  the  great  plague  of  London  (1665) 
the  most  realistic  description  is  Defoe's  Journal  of  the  Plague  Year. 

29  28.  The  siege  of  Jerusalem.  Read  Josephus,  The  Jewish  War, 
Bks.  V  and  VI. 

29  31.    exasperation.     Compare  note  on  p.  26,  1.  28. 

30  3,  4.    even  of  maternal  love.     The  reference  is  to  an  incident 
mentioned  by  Josephus  (The  Jewish  War,  Bk.  VI,  Chap.  Ill),  in  which 
a  mother  is  described  as  driven  by  the  stress  of  famine  to  kill  and 
devour  her  own  child. 

30  5.     romantic  misery.     How  romantic  ?      Compare   this  phrase 
with  similar  uses  of  the  word  romantic. 
30  10.    River  Jaik.     The  Ural. 

30  33.     scenical  propriety.     Compare   the   statement  with   similar 
ones  made  by  the  author  elsewhere. 

31  11.     decrement.     Compare  with  its  positive  correspondent,  incre- 
ment. 

31  20.    acharnement.     Fury. 

31  26.    The  first  stage,  etc.     A  time  mark  in  the  essay. 

32  10.     liable.     Another  instance  of  a  word  often  misused,  correctly 
employed  in  the  text.     Compare  note  on  aggravate,  p.  26,  1.  28. 

32  23.  Bactrian  camels.  There  are  two  species  of  camel,  the  drome- 
dary, single  humped,  and  the  Bactrian,  with  two  humps.  The  former 
b  native  to  Arabia,  the  latter  to  central  Asia.  The  dromedary  is  the 


NOTES.  81 

swifter  of  the  two.     Bactria  is  the  ancient  name  of  that  district  now 
called  Balkh,  in  Afghanistan. 

33  7.     evasion.     Compare  with  its  positive  correspondent  invasion  ; 
compare  decrement,  p.  31,  1.  n. 

34  8.     champaign  savannas.     Both  words  mean  about  the  same,  an 
open,  treeless  country,  nearly  level.     What  is  the  linguistic  source  of 
both  words  ? 

37  19.     hills  of  Moulgaldchares.     Spurs  of  the  Urals  running  south- 
west. 

38  10.     Polish  dragoons.     "The  adjective  refers  not  to  the  nation- 
ality, but  to  the  equipment  of  the  cavalry.     Thus  there  was  at  one  time 
in  the  French  army  a  corps  called  Chasseurs  d'Afrique,  and  in  both  the 
French  and  that  of  the  Northern  troops  in  our  own  Civil  War  a  corps 
of  Zouaves.     Similarly  at  p.  53,  1.  24,  De  Quincey  speaks  of  yagers 
among  the  Chinese  troops.     Perhaps  both  Polish  dragoon  and  yager 
were  well-known  military  terms  in  1837.     At  any  rate  there  is  no  gain 
in  scrutinizing  them  too  closely,  since  the  context  in  both  cases  seems 
to  be  pure  invention." —  BALDWIN. 

38  11.  cuirassiers.  From  the  French.  Soldiers  protected  by  a 
cuirass,  or  breastplate,  and  mounted. 

38  20.     River  Igritch.     The  Irgiz-koom. 
3921.     concurrently.     Etymology? 

39  33.     sad  solitudes,  etc.     Notice  this  as  one  of  the  points  in  a  very 
effective  paragraph. 

40  3.     aggravations.     Compare  note  on  p.  26, 1.  28. 

40  5.  howling  wilderness.  Why  so  called?  Compare  with  a 
previous  use  of  the  same  expression  (p.  12,  1.  5). 

40  18.  spectacle.  Compare  with  other  references  to  the  theatrical 
quality  of  the  Flight. 

40  21.     myriads.      Is   this   literal?      Notice   the   contrast   in   tone 
between  this  sentence  and  those  which  close  the  paragraph. 

41  12.     adust.     "  Latin,  adustus,  burned.     Looking  as  if  burned  or 
scorched." —  Century  Dictionary. 

41  15.  erected  their  speaking  eyes.  Study  this  expression  until  its 
forcefulness  is  felt.  The  camel  is  notorious  for  its  unresponsive  dull- 
ness; indeed  its  general  apathy  to  its  surroundings  is  all  that  accounts 
for  its  apparent  docility.  De  Quincey,  therefore,  is  speaking  by  the 
book  when  he  describes  these  brutes  as  "  without  the  affections  or 
sensibilities  of  flesh  and  blood."  Their  very  submissiveness  is  due  to 
their  stupidity. 

41  20.  those  of  Xerxes.  See  Crete's  History  of  Greece,  Chap. 
XXXVIII. 


82  NOTES. 

41  29.  untread.  A  dictionary  word,  but  uncommon.  Recall  similar 
words  used  by  De  Quincey  which  add  picturesqueness  in  part  because 
of  their  novelty. 

41  31.    their  old  allegiance.     1616.     See  the  close  of  this  paragraph. 

41  32.    scapegoat.    Leviticus,  xvi,  7-10;  20-22. 

42  32,  33.    land  of  promise  .  .  .  house,  etc.    Deuteronomy -,  viii,  14; 
ix,  28. 

43  8.     Orsk.     Upon  the  river  Or. 
43  9.    Oriembourg.     A  fort. 

43  23.    sinister.     Etymology? 

43  29.    transpiring.     Like  aggravate  and  liable,  a  word  often  mis- 
used.    What  does  it  mean  ? 

44  10.    were  dispersed.     Note  the  variety  of  phrases  in  the  following 
ten  lines  used  to  indicate  separation. 

46  16.     Hetman.    Chief.    Compare  Germ.  Hauptmann,  Eng.  captain, 
Fr.  chef. 

47  i.     evasion.     See  previous  note  on  p.  33, 1.  7. 

48  2.     carabines.     Old-fashioned  spelling.     Short  rifles  adapted  to 
the  use  of  mounted  troops. 

49  13.    without  a  parallel.     As  has  been  seen,  De  Quincey  is  fond 
of  superlative  statements.     A  writer  may  or  may  not  be  true  in  his 
claims  ;  the  habitual  assumption,  however,  predisposes   his  reader  to 
doubt  his  judgment. 

49  16.  Desultors.  This  word  is  not  in  common  use,  but  desultory 
is.  Look  up  the  derivation  and  note  the  metaphor  concealed  in  the 
latter  word. 

49  19.    at  the  rate  of  200   miles.     Compare  preceding  note  on 
p.  24, 1.  26. 

50  27.     "  more  fell,"  etc.     From  the  last  speech  in  Shakespeare's 
Othello,  addressed  to  lago  : 

O  Spartan  dog, 

More  fell  than  anguish,  hunger,  or  the  sea  I 
Look  on  the  tragic  loading  of  this  bed ; 
This  is  thy  work. 

51  17.     "fierce  varieties."     Misquoted.     See  Paradise  Lost,  II,  599; 
VII,  272. 

51  19.     post  equitem,  etc. : 

Behind  the  horseman  sits  black  care. 

—  Horace's  O<ies,  III,  i,  40. 

51  20.    undying  worm.     Isaiah,  Ixvi,  24. 


NOTES.  83 

51  29.     "  from  morn  till  dewy  eve."     Paradise  Lost,  I,  742. 

52  32.     On  a  fine  morning.     Study  this  paragraph   carefully  with 
reference  to  the  rhetorical  effect.     The  entire  scene  is  the  product  of 
De  Quincey's  imagination ;  do  you  consider  it  truthful  ? 

53  24.     yagers.     German  Jager ;  used  of  a  huntsman  or  a  forester, 
also  in  parts  of  Germany  and  Austria  used  to  indicate  light  infantry  or 
cavalry.     Compare  with  Polish  dragoons,  p.  38,  1.  10. 

54  21.     indorsed.     Look  up  the   etymology.     Has  De   Quincey,  in 
his  note,  quoted  Milton  accurately?     See  Paradise  Regained,  III,  329. 

56  J3.  rather  in  a  diagonal.  This  is  another  characteristic  of 
De  Quincey  ;  he  is  sometimes  tediously  exact  in  his  details  ;  perhaps  the 
minuteness  is  justifiable  in  this  instance,  as  the  statement  increases  the 
realistic  effect  of  an  imaginary  scene. 

56  is.  a  large  fresh-water  lake.  The  Lake  of  Tengis  here  referred 
to,  mentioned  by  name  in  the  paragraph  following  this,  is  evidently 
Lake  Balkash,  into  which  flows  the  river  Ily.  It  is  one  of  the  largest 
lakes  in  the  steppes,  but  its  water  is  really  salt. 

59  21.     globes  and  turms.     Latinisms.     Milton  uses  globe  in  Para- 
dise Lost,  II,  512,  and  turms  in  Paradise  Regained,  IV,  66. 

60  4.     retributary.    What  more  common  form  is  used  synonymously  ? 

60  21.     "La  nation  des  Torgotes,"  etc.    '"The  nation  of  the  Tor- 
gouths  (to  wit  the  Kalmucks}  arrived  at  Ily  wholly  shattered,  having 
neither  victuals  to  live  on  [sic]  nor  clothes  to  wear.     I  had  foreseen 
this,  and  had  given  orders  for  making  every  kind  of  preparation  neces- 
sary for  their  prompt  relief;  which  was  duly  done.     The  distribution  of 
lands  was  made ;  and  there  was  assigned  to  each  family  a  portion  suffi- 
cient to  serve  for  its  support,  whether  by  cultivating  it  or  by  feeding 
cattle  on  it  [sic].     There  were  given  to  each  individual  materials  for  his 
clothing,  corn  for  his  sustenance  for  the  space  of  one  year,  utensils  for 
household  purposes,  and  other  things  necessary ;  besides  some  ounces 
of  silver  wherewith  to  provide  himself  with  anything  that  might  have 
been  forgotten.     Particular  places  were  marked  out  for  them,  fertile  in 
pasture;  and  cattle  and  sheep,  etc.,  were  given  them,  that  they  might 
be  able  for  the  future  to  work  for  their  own  support  and  well-being.'  — 
This  is  a  note  of  Kien  Long  subjoined  to  his  main  narrative;  and  De 
Quincey,  I  find,  took  the  above  transcript  of  it  from  the  French  trans- 
lation of  Bergmann's  book.     That  transcript,  it  is  worth  observing,  is 
not  quite  exact  to  the  original  French  text  of  the  Pekin  missionaries." 
—  MASSON. 

61  )2.     "Lorsqu'ils  arriverent,"  etc.     "'  When  they  arrived  on  our 
frontiers  (to  the  number  of  some  hundreds  of   thousands,  although 


84  NOTES. 

nearly  as  many  more  had  perished  by  the  extreme  fatigue,  the  hunger, 
the  thirst,  and  all  the  other  hardships  inseparable  from  a  very  long  and 
very  toilsome  march),  they  were  reduced  to  the  last  misery,  they  were 
in  want  of  everything.  The  Emperor  supplied  them  with  everything. 
He  caused  habitations  to  be  prepared  for  them  suitable  for  their  manner 
of  living;  he  caused  food  and  clothing  to  be  distributed  among  them; 
he  had  cattle  and  sheep  given  them,  and  implements  to  put  them  in  a 
condition  for  forming  herds  and  cultivating  the  earth ;  and  all  this  at 
his'  own  proper  charges,  which  mounted  to  immense  sums,  without 
counting  the  money  which  he  gave  to  each  head  of  a  family  to  provide 
for  the  subsistence  of  his  wife  and  children.' 

"  This  is  from  a  eulogistic  abstract  of  Kien  Long's  own  narrative  by  one 
of  his  Chinese  ministers,  named  Yu  Min  Tchoung,  a  translation  of  which 
was  sent  to  Paris  by  the  Jesuit  missionary,  P.  Amiot,  together  with  the 
translation  of  the  imperial  narrative  itself.  The  transcript  is  again  by 
the  French  translator  of  Bergmann,  and  is  again  rather  inaccurate."  - 
MASSON. 

63  17.     lex  talionis.     Law  of  retaliation. 

63  18.     "Lex  nee  justior,"  etc.     "Nor  is  there  any  law  more  just 
than  that  the  devisers  of  murder  should  perish  by  their  own  device."  - 
OVID,  Ars  Amatoria,  I,  655. 

63  25.     lares.     The  minor  deities  of  a  Roman  household. 

63  30.     Arcadian  beauty.     Arcadian  is  synonymous  with  rural  sim- 
plicity and  beauty.     Arcadia,  the  central   province  of   Greece,  was   a 
pastoral  district  and  lacked  the  vices — as  well  as  some  of  the  virtues  — 
of  the  surrounding  states. 

64  i.     extirpation.     Etymology? 

64  23.  music.  One  who  has  listened  to  Mongolian  attempts  at 
harmony  must  suspect  that  De  Quincey  is  again  inspired  by  his  imagi- 
nation when  he  characterizes  this  part  of  the  commemoration  as  "  rich 
and  solemn." 

64  28.  columns  of  granite  and  brass.  This  feature  of  the  narrative, 
as  well  as  many  other  details  of  apparent  fact,  including  the  entire 
inscription  said  to  have  been  placed  upon  the  monument,  are  evidently 
the  pure  invention  of  De  Quincey's  fancy,  no  mention  of  these  details 
being  found  in  his  historical  sources. 


ADVERTISEMENTS 


HUDSON'S  SHAKESPEARE 


For  School  and  Home  Use. 
BY  HENRY    N.  HUDSON,  LL.D., 

Author  of  "The  Life,  Art,  and  Characters  of  Shakespeare" 
Editor  of  "  The  Harvard  Shakespeare"  etc. 

Revised  and  enlarged  Editions  of  twenty -three  Plays.     Carefully  expurgated, 

with  explanatory  Notes  at  the  bottom  of  the  page,  and  critical  Notes  at 

the  end  of  each  volume.     One  play  in  each  volume. 
Square  i6mo.     Varying  in  size  from  128  to  253  pages.     Mailing  price  of  each : 

cloth,  50  cents;  paper,  35  cents.     Introduction  price,  cloth,  45  cents; 

paper,  30  cents.    Per  set  >.in  box),  $10.00. 

Why  is  Hudson's  Shakespeare  the  standard  in  a  majority  of  the  best 
schools  where  the  greatest  attention  is  paid  to  this  subject  ?  Because 
Dr.  Hudson  was  the  ablest  Shakespearean  scholar  America  has  ever 
known.  His  introductions  to  the  plays  of  Shakespeare  are  well  worth 
the  price  of  the  volume.  He  makes  the  characters  almost  living  flesh 
and  blood,  and  creates  a  great  interest  on  the  part  of  the  student  and  a 
love  for  Shakespeare's  works,  without  which  no  special  progress  can  be 
made.  Whoever  can  command  the  interest  of  the  pupil  in  a  great 
author  or  his  works  is  the  person  who  renders  the  greatest  service. 

The  list  of  plays  in  Hudson's  School  Shakespeare  is  as  follows : 


A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream.       Henry  the  Fourth,  Part  I. 


The  Merchant  of  Venice. 
Much  Ado  about  Nothing. 
As  You  Like  It. 
The  Tempest. 
King  John. 
Richard  the  Second. 
Richard  the  Third. 


Henry  the  Fourth,  Part  II. 
Henry  the  Fifth. 
Henry  the  Eighth. 
Romeo  and  Juliet. 
Julius  Ccesar. 
Hamlet. 
King  Lear. 


Macbeth. 

Antony  and  Cleopatra. 

Othello. 

Cymbeline. 

Coriolanus. 

Twelfth  Night. 

The  Winter's  Tale. 


C.  T.  Winchester,  Professor  of  Eng- 
lish Literature,  IVesleyan  University: 
The  notes  and  comments  in  the  school 
edition  are  admirably  fitted  to  the  need  of 
the  student,  removing  his  difficulties  by 
stimulating  his  interest  and  quickening  his 
perception. 


Hiram  Corson,  Professor  of  English 
Literature,  Cornell  University:  I  con- 
sider them  altogether  excellent.  The 
notes  give  all  the  aid  needed  for  an  under- 
standing of  the  text,  without  waste  and 
distraction  of  the  student's  mind.  The 
introductory  matter  to  the  several  plays  is 
especially  worthy  of  approbation. 


We  invite  correspondence  -with  all  ivho  are  interested  in  tin 
study  of  Shakespeare  in  the  class-room. 


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Browne's  Shakspere's  Versification 25 

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Garnett's  Selections  in  English  Prose  from  Elizabeth  to  Victoria..     1.50 

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